Will NBA's attempt to shame stars into caring be successful tonight?

Many NBA fans have fond memories of classic Eastern vs Western Conference midseason All-Star battles. Unfortunately the memories have become much more distant as NBA player at some point decided to just make the All-Star Game a no defense affair featuring uncontested dunks and logo 3-point attempts.

With the lone exception of Jaylen Brown last year, stars also decided to bypass the dunk contest, since they didn't want to deal with the embarrassment of losing. You can credit LeBron James with starting that trend.

The NBA has resorted to featuring a G-Leaguer in the Dunk Contest the past few years while stars like Zion Williamson and Anthony Edwards watch on. The All-Star Game though is the main event and nothing has seemed to work in terms of getting players to play the game like any other. It's odd though, because NBA players will play hard in other exhibitions whether in the summer or at Team USA practices. Even higher prize money for the winning All-Star team's roster didn't move the needle.

So that brings us to tonight where NBA all-stars will have what hopes to be competitive play-in games before the main event. Kenny Smith's young All-Stars will face off against Charles Barkley's power house global stars, who are a bit less lethal with Doncic, Giannis, and Embiid still missing. And then Shaq's OG's which feature our Celtics stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, and the elder statesmen faces of the NBA in James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant amongst others face off against a team of Candace Parker's "rising stars" with the word "stars" being quite a stretch. It's more or less second tier rookies and second year players. The hope is that these young players will give their all and NBA superstars won't want the shame that would come from losing to them, so they will play hard as well.

Any NBA team can beat another on any given night as we've seen many times locally when the Celtics lose to some piss poor team. So as much as the talent discrepancy is, LeBron, Curry, Durant, and Tatum can't just cake walk through the game and be assured a win.

So this is where we're at. The NBA had to come up with this gimmick to get players to care in a showcase for their fans. Call me an optimist, but I think it might just work tonight. Not sure if it will in future years, but I think tonight could actually be a fun watch. Something that has been in short supply during NBA All-Star Sunday's recently.

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