A great All-Star weekend is in the past and the NBA will be entering their final portion of the season soon. In my last article, I touched on how I hated the format of the new All-Star Game. It was an opinion so I wasn’t wrong about anything, but I never thought about the possibility of it making the All-Star Game much more fun for everyone. The format is still a little weird to me, and it’s more unusual than a regular game with a running score. However, this format and the aspect of donating to charity made the game a lot more fun. The NLJ group chat was surely loving, buzzing with excitement. Will the number be 24 every year for Kobe? Will we still make adjustments? The format didn’t really have flaws after seeing it happen, so it might not be necessary.   

The dunk contest was the biggest controversy of the weekend. My take on it is simple. Derrick Jones Jr. did well enough to win the dunk contest, so people shouldn’t be saying he didn’t deserve it. Even with that, Aaron Gordon performed better than Jones, and he should have beat him. The judges were very nice with their 50’s, and gave out 10 perfect scores to dunks on Saturday, which I feel like isn’t the best if everything is a 50.

One thing that I really enjoyed was Common’s opening to the game. I thought he did a really great job telling stories of Chicago, Dwyane Wade and Kobe. Also, making up rhymes to introduce the players was very impressive to me, and it was more fun than boring introductions. I could tell that it took him a lot of preparation and hard work. But he looked confident and it all flowed amazingly. Common and the other performances throughout the weekend enhanced the events to make them go down as one of the best All-Star Weekends we have seen in a while.

• Kevin Barnett

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