A game of Aardvark, anyone?
The off ramp between the Super Bowl and Opening Day is, alas, the NBA All-Star gathering, an assembly of tattoos and egos, shamelessly sponsored and supported by various corporate dupes so that no basketball player under contract now or ever will miss an opportunity to stuff a little bit of someone else’s cash in his pockets for doing what he does already for an absurd amount of money.
No All-Star affair in any sport can be held these days without silly sideshows, home run contests in baseball, stick handling in hockey, something in football called Kick Tac Toe (don’t ask) and in the NBA a celebrity game coached by Shannon Sharpe and Stephen A Smith, who have nothing to do with basketball — a better game would be the two of them yelling at each other — and no explanation about why Kai Cenat and Kwame Onwauchi are celebrities.
The actual basketball game is, of course, a farce, excluding all of the Bulls, who wisely would not take part in any event that would have them. This time peripherals such as slam dunks and silly skills were secondary to a 3-point he/she shootout between Stephen Curry and Sabrina Ionescu, not exactly Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs but times have mellowed.
Gamely, the Kia Skills Challenge tried to identify the world’s fastest dribbler, and Panini — a collectible not a sandwich — aimed to detect the rising stars.
And yet the NBA is still a little short on what is possible. Some suggestions, for free.
The Fifth Third Bank Shot Competition: Rules are simple. The ball must touch something else before going into the basket, preferably something inhuman. Majority opinion of the judges will rule on any ball that bounces off Nikola Jokic.
The Gerber Future Legends Classic: This will be a preview of next year’s college freshmen, for which the winning team will receive $10,000 for each player or his weekly salary back at high school, whichever is larger.
The Revolving Take a Charge/Give a Foul Encounter: Restricted to off guards, or rather to guards who are off center.
The da Vinci Decoder: Player tattoo hieroglyphics are deciphered on the run. Winner receives the LeBron James Memorial Sketchbook and a signed copy of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” Piercings are both optional, painful and hopefully out of sight.
Aardvark: This is a variation of the old game of H-O-R-S-E, designed especially to get players from the Ivy League and Stanford into the All-Star Weekend. Instead of taking letters for each shot missed, the player announces a letter for each shot made and tries to out spell his opponent. He does not have to make his own shot and the tiebreaker is c-h-r-y-s-a-n-t-h-e-m-u-m.
The Palmolive Posse Pile Up: All of the hangers-on and sycophants of NBA players run together in the middle of the floor with their lips pursed and meld into one giant pucker.
The Airport Rental Car Sixth Man Lineup: This game is a reward for the unsung first man off the bench. Contestants are judged by how forcefully they rip off their warmups, how patiently they wait at the scorer’s table and how sincerely they pat the rump of the man they replace.
The Federal Last Three Minutes Express: This game is designed to distill the essence of basketball. The clock starts with the score tied at 100 and 3 minutes to play. Eight of the 10 guys on the floor stand outside the three-point line while the stars of each team run around each other on each end of the floor until the score is 111-110 and one coach is hugging his star while the other coach pours ice water down his star’s shorts; not to be confused with …
… Film at 10:23: This is the one shot or the one play or the one mistake that makes the late night news and is all anyone ever sees of NBA basketball until Boston plays Denver in the seventh game of the finals in prime time and another season is measured, like rings on a tree, or DeMar DeRozan’s cornrows.
The Triple-Double Dribble: A statistic understood and printed only on NBA.com.