Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Mike Sykes
Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you’ve had an excellent week and have a great weekend ahead of you.
Well, folks. We’ve done it. Or, actually, excuse me — they’ve done it.
The NBA All-Star game has officially jumped the shark. It’s not even the All-Star game anymore. It’ll actually be the All-Star games.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the NBA has decided to turn the game into a quick flash pickup game format. There will be a four-team tournament between the All-Stars with two semifinal games between teams and then a final game to win the All-Star “tournament,” which seems to be what they’re calling it.
There are more details about the format, but if I’m being honest, I don’t care. I don’t like this. Everything about it feels forced. This doesn’t feel right, you know? This isn’t how the All-Star game is supposed to go. It’s not what it’s supposed to look like.
The NBA All-Star game means something. Or, at least, it was supposed to. It’s supposed to be a celebration of the game and its top talents. However, with the players barely trying, the game has become a shell of itself in recent years.
We’ve had moments of greatness. But, more often than not, we’re getting record-breaking scoring performances, half-hearted shot contests and half-court 3-point bombs. It’s not fun anymore. It doesn’t feel special. No matter how many solutions we all devise plans to try and fix it, it doesn’t mean anything if the players aren’t trying.
That’s how we ended up here. That’s why the NBA has turned the league’s biggest stage into a glorified pickup game.
As much as I hate it, I can’t blame the league for it. The players have pushed things this far. They know it’s bad. The league’s stars have acknowledged it. There’s no real workaround — the players just have to play harder. But they won’t. It’s just not going to happen. There’s too much money involved to risk injury and we’ve collectively devalued the regular season so much that it simply doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It’s a relic. A trophy. An accolade to simply throw on a resume.
Here’s my suggestion: Let’s just treat it like that. The All-Stars selected should be All-Stars in name only. Stop playing the game. End the weekend. Just give the players a week off and see how that goes.
The All-Star game is important. But if players can’t be interested enough in the game to celebrate and compete, so be it. Let’s not make them.
Is that a boring solution? Extremely. But it’s also far less embarrassing than trying to tweak a game repeatedly to continue getting the same result.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe once the game is gone for a few years, it’ll come back and a new generation of talent will be ready to make it mean something again.
Until then, can we please stop messing around?
Franz Wagner is the real deal
Bryan Kalbrosky hit me up earlier this week to ask if I thought Franz Wagner was an All-NBA player so far this season. I kind of scoffed at the idea.
Obviously, Franz is in incredible player. But is he one of the best 15 players in the league today? I found that kind of hard to believe.
Then, he did this.
Going toe-to-toe with LeBron James to put up a 37-point, 11-assist double-double and hitting a game-winner on the road against the Lakers? Yeah, man. I don’t know if he’s a top 15 guy. But I’d be silly to say he’s not at least in the conversation at this point.
He’s averaged 25.4 points per game since Paolo Banchero went down on Halloween.
According to HoopsHype’s global rating rankings, Wagner is the 10th best player in the world early on this season and the best under 26 years old.
Simply put, he’s got the juice. So, yeah, Bryan. I think you’re onto something here.
Shootaround
— Guys, Kendrick Lamar dropped an album! Bryan tracked the sports references included in it. There are lots of NBA joints in here.
— It’s hilarious how you still can’t read Russell Westbrook’s 200 triple-double sign. Robert Zeglinski has more.
— If you missed Prince Grimes’ last Layup Lines column, he made a great case for Dalton Knecht as rookie of the year.
— It’s insane how good Egor Demin has been early on in this NCAA season.
That’s a wrap, folks. Thanks so much for reading. Have a fantastic weekend. Peace.
-Sykes ✌️