Welcome to our annual winners and losers of the NBA’s All-Star Game, where the biggest winner of all was the league itself, as players actually tried under the USA vs. World format.
Unlike recent years, when effort was absent, competition was central to the exhibition, thanks in large part to France’s Victor Wembanyama, who literally set the tone from jump.
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Prior to the game, after players from all three teams — among them Anthony Edwards on Team Stars, Nikola Jokic on Team World and Kevin Durant on Team Stripes — hinted that this year would be no different, it would not have been surprising to see more of the same.
On Saturday, Edwards, in fact, said of the absence of effort, “It is what it is at this point.”
Just before tip-off, I said to my wife, “They’re not going to try.”
“Of course they’re going to try,” she said. “It’s in their nature. They’d have to try not to try.”
“Exactly. You watch.”
Then, Wembanyama happened on Sunday.
WINNER: Victor Wembanayama
Edwards matched up against Wembanyama for the opening tip, suggesting that Team Stars would not be taking the game seriously (after all, “I’m 6 feet,” said Edwards, who is 6-4, “and he’s 8 feet”). Only, Wembanyama tipped it to Jamal Murray, immediately posted up Cade Cunningham and threw down a dunk so thunderous it changed the evening’s tone.
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As Edwards told the broadcast, after an overtime win, “I ain’t gonna lie. Wemby set the tone. He came out playing hard, so it’s hard not to match that. S***, that’s what happened.”
From there, it was game on. There were challenges. There were timeouts. Players were working the referees. Scottie Barnes even took a swipe to the face. It was real basketball.
And even though Wembanyama’s Team World lost both of its games (37-35 to Team Stars and 48-45 to Team Stripes) all three round-robin contests finished within one possession, and the Frenchman gets credit for inspiring the competition. It speaks to how good he is — that one man, albeit a 7-foot-5(?) unicorn, can swing the energy of an entire game all alone.
But Wembanyama is that good. And NBC did a nice job on the broadcast, too, highlighting him as the superstar he is. Everything he says is so great if you take it in the right tone, too.
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“What makes me so sure that I will win championships?” he asked the broadcast in a feature. “Because it’s my dream, and nobody or nothing can take away my dreams. I’m in love with the game, I’m in love with competition, so why should anybody win it over me?”
That is the stuff of legend right there. And, wait, there is more.
Earlier in the weekend, when asked if he would accept the moniker of Face of the League, Wembanyama told NBA TV’s Chris Haynes, “I definitely see it happening. I think it is the natural course of things, you know? Supply and demand, you know, and I’m here to supply.”
Given Wembanyama’s effort on Sunday, that moniker may be his sooner than later. Nobody spoke louder than the Frenchman in words and actions on All-Star Weekend.
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LOSER: Old legs
Not to start. But to end.
The question, after Wembanyama inspired competition between Team World and Team Stars — a group of mostly younger players — was whether the self-proclaimed “old heads” (a team headlined by LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard) would follow suit.
That they did in Games 2 and 3 of the evening, defeating Team Stars and Team World in back-to-back nail-biters. Legend turned NBC analyst Carmelo Anthony said he knew we were in for more effort when he saw his friend LeBron cover the court in eight steps.
In fact, a James 3-pointer, nearly from the logo, almost put away Team Stars for good in Game 2. Edwards responded with five straight, including a strip of Donovan Mitchell that he turned into a transition 3, which gave Team Stars a 40-39 advantage. Only for James to set up the final play, which fell into the hands of De’Aaron Fox, who ripped a game-winner.
Leonard took the mantle in Game 3, scoring 31 of his team’s points in a 48-45 victory against Team World that legitimately had Wembanyama bummed about the outcome.
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But in the championship game, which once again pitted the youngsters of Team Stars against the “old heads” of Team Stripes, Edwards & Co. ran away with the trophy, 47-21.
If ever there was any question as to whether a torch had been passed from one American generation — a group led by LeBron — to the next, Edwards answered with a punctuation.
WINNER: Anthony Edwards
The “It is what it is” comment aside, Edwards had a fantastic weekend.
He scored 32 points on 13-of-22 shooting from the field and 6-of-15 shooting from deep across 26 minutes in three games, to go along with nine rebounds and three assists.
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Asked in the arena afterward about what it was like being defended by James, Durant and Leonard, Edwards said smiling, “I want to cook them every time. You know that.”
It was not the first time Edwards sounded cool as hell over the weekend.
Which raises the question: Is Edwards the brightest American basketball star we have? Leonard may have had a claim, given how well he has played over the past two months, and given how well he played in the earlier portions of Sunday evening, but having seen how Edwards shined over the weeekend, both on and off the court, it is hard to deny him.
But even Edwards knows where the NBA’s bread is buttered.
LOSER: The Doubters
NBA commissioner Adam Silver had a wide smile on his face as he presented trophies to Team Stars for its All-Star Game championship and Edwards for his MVP performance.
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And for good reason. There were many doubters, myself included, who thought the All-Star Game had lost all hope, no matter the format, and USA vs. World would not solve it.
Then again, it sounds like even former president Barack Obama had his doubts.
“I know a lot of people have been concerned about the All-Star Game not seeing as much effort; today we saw it,” Obama told Reggie Miller on the broadcast. “And I do think that, whenever you get an international team against an American team, they want to compete.”
There Silver has it — a pretty strong endorsement indeed.
WINNER: Damian Lillard’s Achilles
I think we were all a little nervous seeing 35-year-old Damian Lillard, who has not played at all this season, trotting out there to try to win a third 3-Point Contest in four years, but imagine being the doctor who performed surgery on the Achilles he tore 10 months ago.
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(Dr. Neal ElAttrache, by the way, from the host city of Los Angeles!)
Instead, Lillard did what he does, narrowly defeating Devin Booker in the final of the shootout, joining Larry Bird and Craig Hodges as the event’s only three-time winners.
LOSER: The dunk contest
It was a dunk contest field that required an introduction, and it was not always a kind one.
Carter Bryant, Jaxson Hayes, Keshad Johnson and Jase Richardson did some dunks, all of which we had seen before. In fact, Richardson recreated one by his father, two-time dunk contest winner Jason Richardson, which was cool, but the repetition got real tired quickly.
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In an anticlamictic ending, Bryant did not realize he had to get his three attempts at a single dunk off in a 90-second window (why are we timing this?), missing the first two and rushing a third, less-cool dunk before the buzzer. That is how it ended. With a whimper.
Maybe it is time to scrap the dunk contest entirely.
Then again …
WINNER: Keshad Johnson
Johnson did some pretty sweet dunks.
LOSER: Saturday’s early start time
I don’t know about you, but I had some friends who missed the start of All-Star Saturday Night because it was more like All-Star Saturday Early Evening, beginning at 5 p.m. ET.
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The good news: They didn’t miss much, as Lillard won (again), and the New York Knicks took the Shooting Stars Competition (that’s right: another shooting competition replaced the Skills Competition, because Chris Paul ruined what was left of that last year), before Johnson won a dunk contest between players most people I know did not recognize.
Is it time to scrap the dunk contest? Silver managed to spice up the All-Star Game, so maybe he can resurrect that, too. I like this idea from Edwards as a wrinkle to the event: “Now, if we have a contest where, Can I dunk on him? Can he dunk on me? That’d be fun.”
Dunking on defenders? That would be fun, Ant. That would be fun.
And who would Edwards dunk on if he could? Why, “Rudy Gobert,” of course.
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WINNER: VJ Edgecombe
If anyone besides Wembanyama deserves credit for the effort on All-Star Weekend, it is Philadelphia 76ers rookie VJ Edgecombe, who brought the heat in the Rising Stars games, scoring the final 10 points of a semifinal and delivering the title-clinching free throws.
Afterward, Edgecombe said, “I wanted to win.”
See how easy that is for the players. They would have to try not to try. Instead, they tried.
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