NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver, stated Sunday that there has to be changes made to the NBA’s All-Star game.
The event has players representing each conference, and is a game filled with one on one battles, alley oops, and dunks that often exceed those done the night before in the annual dunk contest. The game has always become well known for something else that has drawn criticism, a lack of defense.
This year’s All-Star game shows just how little defense is played. The final score? West Conference 192, East 182. in 48 minutes both teams scored for a combined 374 points, which is an All-Star game record. The commissioner had this to say about the future of the All-Star game.
“I promise this time that next year’s will be different,” said silver, speaking with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols before Game 2 of the NBA Finals. “I think we all recognized, and we talked about it at least year’s All-Star, we’ve gotten to the point where everyone seemed to agree it needed to be more competitive. And by everyone, I mean including the players. Chris Paul, who’s president of the (players) union, was the first to say to me the day after the game — and he was not playing in that game — ‘let’s get together and do something about this.”
“And we recognize we don’t want our players to be playing at a Finals pace where they could potentially risk injury or anything else. But there’s some point on the spectrum, somewhere from where we are now and the Finals. So we’re tossing around all kinds of ideas. Having players play for particular charities, picking team captains, picking teams, maybe not making it just East vs. West. There’s a lot of great ideas out there.”
This is not the first time the commissioner floated the idea of making changes to the All-Star game. After this year’s scoring bonanza, Silver revealed that Chris Paul, who is the president of the National Basketball Players association, called him and stated “We need to fix this”. During the conversation, they bounced ideas to one another of possible changes that can be added to improve the game. Ideas such as adding a 4-point shot or having team captains select the starters as opposed to the fans voting the starters.
Silver also made it clear that the league has its eyes and ears on social media and are open to suggestions from fans.
“For our fans on Twitter and Facebook, send (ideas) in. We’re open to new ideas,” Silver said. “We’re going to make a change. I can’t promise it’s going to be better, but it will be different.” via USA Today
