Superman Saves All-Star Weekend. Sort Of.

I remember there was a time when All-Star Weekend used to be a big deal.

Now, I’ve never actually been to one, but I’m talking about at least on TV. Unlike the NFL’s Pro Bowl, this NBA extravaganza came in the middle of the season and included some classic events such as the 3-point shootout, the dunk contest and some newer events like the rookie game and the skills challenge. But, of course, the highlight was always the game which brought the best of the best from both conferences to battle it out in a first-class pick-up game. It was the main time where you could showboat without getting benched and forwards over 7 feet could attempt three-point shots and you could toss nonstop alley-oops to high flyers like it’s NBA Street. I mean, I’m talking about Jordan, Barkley, Dominique Wilkins, Magic, Bird, Malone, Clyde Drexler, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and all of them all on the floor at the same time. But that was 20 years ago, in 1988, at a time when All-Star Weekend was a big deal.

Don’t get me wrong. It has had its moments since then throughout the 1990s, with Jordan still around, Iverson and Kobe and then in 2000 when Vince Carter brought the arena down. But it’s seems like it peaked long ago. Nowadays, players sit out due to injury or past dunk contest winners refuse to play for the risk of losing their crown or the actual game itself has highlights that you can count on one hand, with the focus now so much on winning. It just doesn’t seem as fun as it used to.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe as you get older, All-Star Weekend becomes a treasure of nostalgia, a long-gone fantasy hyped up by distorted childhood memories. But all of the announcers over the weekend kept talking about how many have said the weekend has become dull, especially in the past few years. So what’s missing? What’s changed? Last year’s actual NBA season was more exciting than it has been in a long time.

If you ask Kansas City sportswriter, Jason Whitlock, he’ll blame it on the league’s “dysfunctional relationship with hip hop/gangsta culture” and the turmoil that ensued last year in Las Vegas. In his second ASW article on the scene, he points out that unlike last year, the 2008 crowd was minimal at best:

This All-Star Weekend crowd is the tamest and thinnest I’ve ever seen. Friday night, as I strolled the French Quarter a little past midnight, a cop on horseback estimated the crowd was one-fourth of what the Quarter gets for the Bayou Classic, a traditional football game between Grambling and Southern.

“Nobody came,” said my buddy Branson Wright, who covers the Cavaliers for the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper.

“My only regret,” Players Association president Billy Hunter said, summarizing his All-Star feelings, “is we don’t have the kind of crowds we usually get.”

There’s a theory that people skipped this weekend because they feared post-Katrina New Orleans, its exacerbated economic crisis and desperate citizen survivors. The theory doesn’t hold up when you consider the relatively strong crowds that attended the 2007 Bayou Classic and Essence Festival.

People were afraid of the kind of crowd ASW attracts. That fear multiplied after Las Vegas last year. It’s a terrible, factual generalization, but Vegas’ proximity to Los Angeles made it way too easy for LA gang members to drive to The Strip and hang out in hotel lobbies for three straight days.

At first it was hard to say why no one showed up. But after I watched the game, it all became clear. It was just too boring.

And you can’t blame everything on hip hop, but you can definitely see its massive influence. Dwight Howard, who seemed to be the only one having fun this weekend, made it a show on Saturday night in the 2008 Dunk Contest. In his second dunk of the night, he takes off his jersey revealing an undershirt with the Superman logo. Then he breaks out a red cape and ties it around his neck. He jumped so high off the crowd that he threw the ball down into the hoop. It was needless to say, a spectacular moment and his performance was the highlight of the weekend. And when he was asked were the inspiration came from, he of course said it came from his favorite song Crank Dat by Soulja Boy. But that's another story.