NBA players are urged to ‘play hard’ by Larry Bird…
The NBA All-Star Game in 2023 was such a disaster that the league decided to alter the structure for 2024. The Draft of All-Stars? Vanished. The End of Elam? Vanished. This was the first time the league had reverted to its original structure since 2017. East against West. A game with a set time limit. The league wants to bring back some of the magic that once defined the All-Star Games.
One athlete, who took part in numerous All-Star Games, offers an easier fix. During his Sunday appearance at the Legends Brunch in Indianapolis, Larry Bird asked the 24 players who would play on Sunday night to do one simple thing. “The one thing I would really like to see is they play hard tonight in this All-Star Game,” Bird stated. “I think it’s very important when you have the best players in the world together, you’ve gotta compete, and you’ve gotta play hard, and you’ve gotta show the fans how good they really are.”
NBA greats like Bird weren’t the only ones to subtly express their unhappiness with the 2023 All-Star Game. At his news conference on Saturday, Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged that the All-Star Game from the previous year was “uniformly critical” and that he was hoping for a stronger performance on Sunday.
He could be in the right. An All-Star Game effort usually follows a cycle. For instance, the game was largely considered a success in 2020 since the recently included Elam Ending encouraged players to reach a thrilling conclusion. However, the league has already abandoned the idea after four years. Maybe the humiliation from the previous year will spur the players to strive harder this time, but past performance indicates that the effort will fade along with the excitement.
Maybe this could be fixed with another format modification. Many supporters have advocated for an All-Star format pitting Team USA against foreign players, which may potentially foster rivalries. Perhaps a sizable enough monetary reward would be sufficient. But in the end, the players are responsible. They are the ones who determine the level of interest in an All-Star Game, and if they don’t play as hard as Bird wants, it won’t matter what adjustments the league makes.
