Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James was voted as one of the captains for the 2024 NBA All-Star Game, marking his 20th appearance which is currently a league record.
However, the game could hardly be called one as the two teams played no defense and allowed each other to score at will. The Eastern Conference would end up prevailing, beating the Western Conference 211-186 in a largely lifeless contest.
The 211 points that the East dropped is an All-Star Game record, though NBA Commissioner Adam Silver didn’t sound too happy with the result. Numerous people have suggested tweaks need to be made to the game, but James believes it’s a complex issue.
“I don’t know,” James said. “I think it’s something we need to figure out. Where is the median? This is what a lot of the games are starting to look like too. We wanted to get more pace into the games. We wanted to get more shots. We wanted the game to be more free flowing. We stopped letting the game — be freedom of movement, a lot of freedom of movement now. That’s what our games are like in the regular season now.
“They let us tighten up in the postseason. It’s a deeper dive into a conversation of how we can shore up this game. Obviously from a player’s perspective, it’s fun to get up and down. But at the end of the day, our competitive nature don’t like to have free-flowing scoring like that. But I think the good thing that came out of tonight was none of the players were injured, and everybody came out unscathed or how they were before the game started. So it’s a deeper conversation.”
While Anthony Davis managed to get some enjoyment out of the All-Star Game playing next to Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic, the fans didn’t have much to get excited about. The lack of competitiveness and care in the All-Star Game was hard to miss, and to James’ point fixing it will require a joint effort between players and the league.
Injuries are the No. 1 concern for players, so unless there’s some sort of incentive to play hard they’ll continue to take the All-Star Game lightly.
LeBron James says he’s 50-50 on wanting farewell tour
Although LeBron James will likely continue to keep playing at an All-Star level, he acknowledged his career is nearing its end. However, he remains 50-50 if he wants a farewell tour for his final season.
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