NBA All-Stars Hold Each Other to Under 300 Points

Face it, All-Star games are tough.

Not the game itself, mind you.

The trick is staging it in such a way that a rash of competition actually breaks out.

For every league but baseball, that's been a thankless task.

 

For the past couple of years, the NBA's version of it has been a virtual shootaround, lacking in drama, effort, and frankly, purpose.

This time around, the league took a stab at cobbling together a few ideas the NFL and/or NHL tried with scattershot results.

For example, having player-captains draft their teams and televising it. Awkward.

 

Phil Kessel can be polarizing enough on the ice, but no All-Star deserves that.

The NBA may yet discover this for themselves next season.

 

Maybe Adam Silver & Co feels they're in the chicken salad business now. After all, their tweaks to the game this season actually made it watchable.

Obviously, that all comes down to the players, so full marks to A-listers LeBron James and Kevin Durant on one side and Stephen Curry and James Harden on the other to set the tone, which spread to both ends of the court when the rubber met the road:

 

How about that?

Flash-&-dash is fun to watch, but defense still wins games.

 

And check those threads!

Black-&-white is all the rage again. Just check a hoi polloi website or two.

Or simply take a look at the NHL Pacific Division's kit:

 

That's another point: The NHL's winning team gets a cool mil in a winner-take-all format.

As if.

Most of the players in any All-Star game don't really care about the cash and/or give it to charities.

Bragging rights is usually all it takes to motivate, and for now, the NBA seems to have found a way to make it happen.