ANTHONY GETTINO
Sports Editor
This past weekend the All-Star game took place in Cleveland, Ohio. While it is true that every year there are complaints about the format of the weekend activities, this year had some particularly interesting events.
One of the main complaints has been with the Slam Dunk contest. This year had a weak group, with no headliners or big name players participating. Obi Toppin, Cole Anthony, Juan Toscano-Anderson and rookie Jalen Green.
Toppin would wind up winning the contest in unceremonious fashion.
According to senior history education major Jeremy Erman, the dunk contest needs to have some big name players in it to be better. “Having top players in the contests is how to make this better. I don’t know who these people are in the dunk contest. If Anthony Edwards or another young star were in it, I would definitely have less problems.”
The three-point contest was won by Karl Anthony-Towns, who is a center over Desmond Bane, CJ McCollum, Trae Young, Luke Kennard, Fred VanVleet and Patty Mills. While this contest was much harder to mess up with rules and scoring decisions, it wasn’t entertaining to watch.
The worst of the night had to come from the skills challenge. In a new format, the skills challenge was a contest of three teams of three people. The winning team of Evan Mobley, Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen was able to beat out team Antetokounmpo and team Rookies.
This was very tough to watch, as the teams of big men and bench players were not very skilled for it being called the skills challenge. The Antetokounmpo team didn’t do well in shooting and lost in a tiebreaker for the finals. Team Cavaliers won based off the final round of the challenge being a half-court shot contest.
Why have a half-court shot cap off a contest of skill? NBA players don’t practice these shots and hone their skills in half-court shooting like they would passing, drabbling and basic shooting.
Senior sport management major Kyle Campbell thinks the All-Star weekend needs to revert back to what made it good years ago. “The skills challenge was better before they tried to get fancy with it. If you don’t want it to be a couple of people doing it solo, just make a new game in its place, because this new one is NOT it.”
Whether it’s burnout from seeing the same dunks years on end or the lack of improvements being made to the games, there are problems with All-Star weekend. How the NBA will attend to these remains to be seen.