The only thing exciting about this All-Star Weekend

There is almost zero juice heading into the All-Star Game.

Good morning. Short newsletter today. Let’s basketball.

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Children’s Games; Pieter Bruegel the Elder; 1560

There is a remarkable lack of juice heading into the NBA All-Star Weekend. First of all, an enormous Super Bowl happened a week ago. Between the Taylor Swift of it all, plus the competitive game, plus the Usher halftime show, plus the new Beyoncé music … it just feels like mainstream pop culture/sports overlap is peaking at a very high level completely divorced from the NBA world.

There’s the fact that All-Star is in Indianapolis, which is not conducive to, uh, hype. There’s the fact that the greatest player in the world, Nikola Jokic, clearly and vocally does not really want much of anything to do with All-Star (the game or the festivities). There’s the fact that Jokic’s chief rival, Joel Embiid, is injured and out of commission. Ja Morant, who could be counted on for nothing if not audacious play, is out. The Slam Dunk Contest line-up includes an All-Star (cool) and two players who are not in the NBA (WTF?). The All-Star Draft is gone. The Elam ending is gone. The Celebrity Game features a Backstreet Boy. It’s 2024, folks. The Celebrity Game features a Backstreet Boy. (There is also the promise of a cameo from Pat McAfee. Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe are the head coaches, so there you go.)

The only thing that seems to have any hype heading into All-Star Weekend is a new, creative invention that just might be the greatest thing the NBA has done for All-Star Weekend in forever or it just might spawn the heat death of the take universe. I’m talking, of course, about the Steph Curry vs. Sabrina Ionescu shoot-out. I feel like we need a hero to pre-emptively take down the Twitter servers before Saturday night.