If expectations are the root of frustration, anyone who expected the NBA All-Star Game, or the entire weekend for that matter, to be anything other than a complete and total waste of everyone’s time deserves to be frustrated.
You should have known coming in. The event stinks. Nobody wants anything to do with it. The players don’t really want to play. The fans don’t really want to watch. I can assure you that people like myself, who somehow hit the Powerball profession of getting paid to watch basketball, don’t really want to talk or write about it.
Sunday’s All-Star Game “presentation” ran for almost 3 hours yet included only about 30 minutes of actual basketball. The on-court action, with some bursts of low-bar effort notwithstanding, was as paint-dryingly awful as we’ve all come to expect All-Star basketball to be. And yet, all of the other parts of the night were so painfully bad that we all actually wanted more All-Star basketball by the time it was over.
Kevin Hart? I’ve been wondering for years how this man, who came off Sunday as the living antithesis of funny, became so wildly popular. But now I’m far more curious about the people who were responsible for deciding it was a good idea to have a cringeworthy comic serve as an “on-court emcee.”
The great irony here is that an event usually defined by how little interest these insanely talented superstars have in actually trying was being emceed by a guy who only tried way too hard at his.
The whole 3 hours was hard to watch. It makes you wonder who the NBA All-Star Game is being made for these days. The answer is money, of course. Sponsors are sponsors and TV deals are TV deals, but a bad product is a bad product.
Thank the television gods for Mac McClung in the Dunk Contest on Saturday night for giving fans something NBA-adjacent worth watching this weekend. Usually the 3-point Contest is decently fun, but even that stunk this year.
Stephen Curry didn’t even participate on All-Star Saturday Night — despite it being held on his home court. Curry, who won MVP of Sunday’s contest, did hit a casual half-courter in the All-Star Game. It was the best on-court highlight of the night. But some dude named Jaren actually hit the most memorable shot on Sunday when he banked in a logo 3 for $100,000.
Jaren and Kevin Hart. That’s what everyone will remember about the 2025 NBA All-Star production. There was a time when All-Star games were cool because the best players in the world cared enough to try — at least in the fourth quarter and/or when they had a particular one-on-one matchup — but those days, quite obviously, are long gone.
There was also a time when the All-Star Game was cool because people didn’t have access to any NBA game they wanted to watch any day of the week. Back then you might not see a particular superstar play all season except for the one time he came to your market or showed up on national television. This was an opportunity to showcase a lot of awesome players that can largely be hidden from the masses.
Now, it’s just the third time this week you’re going to watch Jayson Tatum and Donovan Mitchell fire up a bunch of 3s. There’s nothing exciting or unique about it. Even those of us who genuinely love watching NBA basketball already see more than enough of these players, whether that’s on TNT, ESPN, or League Pass.
It’s enough. Nobody needs this weekend — most notably the players themselves. Give them a break. And for the love of all things holy, if nothing else, give us all a break from Kevin Hart the emcee.
following sentence: “The cat lay lazily in the sun, purring contentedly.”
The cat lounged in the sunlight, purring happily.