The NBA Could Really Use A Break

Because everyone else at Industrial Foundry No. 682 is basking in the joys of publicly libidinous biathletes and their subtly vengeful exes, snow-runners with nuclear quad muscles, credit card-kiting biathletes, deeply sinister ice dancers, freerange groin photographers, and cartoon murder-stoats, some poor mope has to tackle the backed up septic tank that is the NBA All-Star Game. Not the thing itself, blessedly, it's not quite that dark yet, but the break is looming just over the horizon of the weekend. You can already feel the symptoms emerging, and see them on the Peacock channel guide.

There are still three regular season games tonight—well, timed basketball events of minimal consequence, if we're honest about it—before the league's week-long break begins, but to listen to the people who purport to care most about the game, the league is up to its eyelids in scorpion venom sunscreen. The All-Star Game itself has been a hot mess for years, and now seems to be in full Pro Bowl territory, but that's the least of Adam Silver's migraines. The NBA, as a whole, is only barely keeping it together, at least beyond those ever-rising franchise values.

Tanking is so rampant that teams that win are accused of undermining the product; this is not new in itself, but the grousing about it is in full flower a month earlier than usual, and being done twice as vehemently by twice as many teams. Utah alone has gamed the system so well that even people who hate tanking admire how they've done it. Load management is now the default for grumps who want to player-hate, even though the players aren't the ones doing the managing. The bench-emptying brawl returned with a vengeance, or anyway with a lot of shouting and a few empty swings, as an expression of competitiveness; Pistons big man Isaiah Stewart is one of the next generation of statement players just because his rep is that of a guy who would rather punch your face into the face of the person behind you than get a rebound in a one-point game. Your mileage for that sort of thing will vary, but it's not a thing of beauty.