The NBA All-Star Game has Turned Into a Glorified Shootaround
Consequence of Continuous Deterioration Assisted by Wrong Decisions
When I was a kid, I didn’t have the privilege to watch any game I wanted as current kids have (at least where I’m from, and that’s Croatia). I got on the NBA’s website early in the morning before school, loaded up highlights and tp tn videos for the previous night, and enjoyed those attractive moves and plays that the best players in the world pulled off.
And there was always a top-10 video for an all-star game as well, and let’s agree on one thing, there was always less defense (in relative terms) in the all-star game than in regular season games. However, in the past there at least was some defense, not a walkup shootaround. I went on to check the all-star game from 2010, a quarter and a half of the game to be honest.
That game had everything, plays from sets, contested shots, shoving, forced (opponents’) errors, blocks, fouls, etc…
The game was different however, in one instance Kevin Garnett received a ball at the 3-point line, then took 2 minuscule steps inside the line and took a long mid-range shot. That would never happen today. The general mindset was different, but there was so much more intent, will, and force going on in that game. Players were actually fighting for rebounds and stood in the way of opponents when going toward the hoop in a fast break.
Yesterday’s game was a glorified shooting practice.
Continuous Detoriation
Yesterday’s game ended up with the final score of 211-186, good for a record-breaking 397 total points and 289 field goal attempts. Along with that, the teams(game) broke the record for most 3-pointers in a game, as well, with 168 3-pointers attempted.
That didn’t come out of the blue, as a similar trend was seen up until 2017.
All-Star Games from 2015-2017 sparked the need for change, which resulted in a major overhaul of the all-star games in the upcoming seasons. Draft for final rosters done by team captains, individual quarters competition (and the incentive to win them was a huge donation to charities of the choice), and Elam ending to spice up the ending of the game.
That changed the dynamic of the ASGs drastically and led to some very interesting games (not all of them can be interesting, even before the 3-point boom there were blowouts), so the decision to just revert it to “the way it was” doesn’t make sense.
If Adam Silver wanted a more competitive game, he completely missed the mark with this change.
No Touching
Even more telling sign of a complete lack of competition and contest between these two teams are some other accumulated stats through the years.
The trend regarding steals is a bit negative, which makes sense given that players were just running up and down the court shooting as soon as reaching the half-court line, but still not as worrying as the number of personal fouls. There have been 3 fouls called in this all-star game. Yes, you’ve read that correctly.
The issue is that these changes don’t follow the trends that are set in the games played during the regular season. The trend of steals, blocks, and even free throws/free throw rate (more important than just raw number) has been the same for the past 15 years (some numbers even more).
FT rate for the past two games was just above 1% which equates to 5 free throws in raw numbers.
Fast Breaks and Threes
These recent All-Star games had a bunch of fast breaks, as the players can run a whole lot more than in the past since it’s not a problem for them to spend 5 minutes on the court running full speed in both directions.
In this year’s game 45/289 - 15.5% shots have a Running prefix in the shot data which would mark them as a “fast break shot”. That number has been similar in the past two years as well (13% and 21%), and maybe we’ve reached a certain point where it stops being fun to watch players run down the court dunking or more often nowadays shooting the 3 (16 running 3-pointers have been shot this year).
On a side note - we have 9.71% of all shots coming as running shots in the ongoing regular season which is a steady increase as well as the past several seasons:
Season: 2014-15 - Fast break ratio: 3.56%
Season: 2015-16 - Fast break ratio: 3.88%
Season: 2016-17 - Fast break ratio: 4.05%
Season: 2017-18 - Fast break ratio: 4.30%
Season: 2018-19 - Fast break ratio: 4.64%
Season: 2019-20 - Fast break ratio: 5.39%
Season: 2020-21 - Fast break ratio: 5.56%
Season: 2021-22 - Fast break ratio: 6.60%
Season: 2022-23 - Fast break ratio: 8.80%
Season: 2023-24 - Fast break ratio: 9.71%Shot Charts
For the end, I’ve sketched out how the shot charts for the entire game looked in the past 25 years except for 1999 because there was no all-star game in that season, and 2019 because for some reason the NBA doesn’t have any data about shots in the 2019 ASG.
The amount of long-range shots has become really wild in the past 3 seasons (and this year’s charts were even wilder) which should remind us that moderation is key to lasting enjoyment.
Motivation
After all this, the key behind the performance in the All-Star game lies in players’ motivation. I really can’t and don’t blame them for taking this as a relaxing weekend to hang around and try to entertain people with some nifty trick shots and dunks not worrying about coverages/schemes/etc…
The schedule is still jam-packed, and a lot of the all-stars missed time due to injuries and no one wants to push it over the limits in a game that means absolutely nothing to them or the team.
My personal opinion is that this is way too late of a time for an all-star game. This might have been a good time for a break up until the play-in was introduced, as you can’t be that relaxed post-all-star break as earlier. No position for playoff/play-in is safe, and the fight for almost all seeds except 1st one on the East is still up for grabs. I think no one wants to risk anything going for a 50/50 ball in a game that will still go for almost 400 points in the end…
This is where the Commissioner steps in, and it’s up to him to make good decisions and not revert them.