filed under National Media | Nightlife | Sports
Annual NBA Bacchanal Descends on New Orleans
1:07PM ON
02/15/2008
BY
Jon Gold
No other event in the American sporting scene quite captures the essence of sports like the NBA All-Star game. Where else could you find flashy rich white dudes from New Jersey bobbing their heads to Mary J. Blige? Where else could you find the amazing confluence of corporate corporate glad-handing and palm-greasing and other innuendo laden noun-participle pairings? The NBA All-Star game is all style and no substance, worse than the Pro Bowl because at least the NFL’s shitshow doesn’t pretend to matter…
Who could forget last year’s NBA All Star Game in Las Vegas? I was there (thanks, Mike), but no where near anything dangerous. I got to go to the dunk contest and three-point contest, where I witnessed this incredible dunk (not coincidentally, this is the same dunker who wants to raise the bucket to 12 feet for the dunk contest.) It was pretty weird to see NBA dunkers in an arena where I once saw Phish. Other than the dunk contest, the night before the game was some truly boring basketball, and it’s pretty clear that the NBA is creating events just to slap sponsors names on them. Last year’s game was as lackluster as they come. Bill Simmons has been campaigning for years to add H-O-R-S-E to the festivities, but to no avail.
Of course, how could I forget to mention witnessing this (fast forward to about 4:20 for the start of the race) from last year’s All-Star game?
What’s in store for this year’s game? Who knows? But I am sure that there will be just-barely trying overpaid, overhyped athletes performing high-altitude acrobatics for a bunch of slick rich white dudes from New Jersey.
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