NBA ALL-STAR WEEKEND 2025

I can’t believe that in the fifteen years of this e-zine’s existence, I’ve written about the NBA All-Star Weekend only once before! And it was basically to rant about the Slam Dunk Contest.

But I still wasn’t planning to “review” it this year, either. I like to just watch and enjoy, (hopefully,) without getting all judgmental (in writing) about the proceedings. But, as this fun and annoying one developed, and Mr. X kept laughing at my bon mots, and telling me to make sure “include” each one, (meaning in this article, which I was not planning on writing,) I finally decided to weigh-in. Briefly. I hope. (I know I know—I should have just live-tweeted my many thoughts, but I was always behind in my viewing, so I figured my thoughts were always a bit late.)

I watched the proceedings all three days/nights, and these are what stood out to me, not in order that they happened:

The absolute highlight of the entire shebang, not just for me but I‘m sure for everyone, was Slam Dunk three-peat Champion, (and Roger Federer doppelgänger,) Mac McClung. (I love that someone there knew enough to play Return of the Mack when he won, as I had been yelling at the TV to do since he was first introduced that night!) OMG! He’s not even in the NBA! He’s in the G League, which is basically the “minors” for basketball players. I’ve watched him all three years that he’s been in the competition, and he gets more amazing each year. The first time he just surprised the heck out of everybody, and single-handedly revived the one time jewel of All-Star Weekend, the interest in which had been flagging for several years. The second year, he was even better, and this year, we all figured he’d be good, but what else could he do to surprise us? Jump over a car, that’s all! And grab the ball off the head of a pal who was sticking-out from the sunroof! I repeat—OMG. Give that guy an NBA contract already! Even for one day, so he can say he played in the League. He deserves it.

By the way—it’s pretty disgusting that no NBA star will compete in that contest anymore. Long gone are the days that Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins dominated. Viewers would prefer to see players like LeBron James, Zion Williamson, and Ja Morant do the dunks, but those guys don’t want to be embarrassed if they lose. Or even miss. Shame on them.

The other highlight of the weekend was seeing a teen-age college student from the audience, Jaren Barajas, win $100,000 shooting from the middle of the court against star Damian Lillard!!! The kid, (who, when asked how he’d spend the money if he won, answered that he’d help his family and use some for college,) had to get one ball in the basket before Dame could get three. Dame had two, and then Jaren did it! And the place went berserk with joy!!! As did I. I have a feeling that Lillard missed a few on purpose, but Mr. X thinks he did not. Only Damian knows.

I appreciate that they spread the events out over multiple venues in the San Francisco area, (labeling everything as “San Francisco Bay Area,” as opposed to all previous years, when they just stated the name of the one arena the festivities were held in,) but it was also a tad annoying, especially because they never explained why they did that. I’d venture a guess for the motivation—because they know that people think that San Francisco is a cesspool of drug addicts and crime and unfortunate homeless people, so they wanted to show that there’s more than that—but I can’t figure it out for sure.

What I can figure-out is that they did sooooo much else wrong, as well! Most of the intros were done in not a great way, (except, finally, for the actual All-Star “game,”) they need to stop re-doing the dunk and skills competitions differently each year, and they totally screwed the Spurs duo—veteran Chris Paul and sophomore Victor Wembanyama, one of my all-time favorite players—in the Skills contest by not explaining the rules correctly to a young guy whose first language is definitely not English!!! Shame on them. They need to hire me already to make it all right next year.

The Friday night “games” were beyond weak. The celebrity one that kicked-off All-Star Weekend had only one real celeb—Shaboozey. The rest were mainly non-famous folks—working actors, WNBA players, supposed social media personalities—with a couple of old NBA players mixed-in. It was a joke. Mr. X pointed-out how empty that venue was.

Then they moved on to the Rising Stars Game that I’ll describe for you in a sec. And it was held at another empty venue! Why couldn’t they have been held at the same site??? It’s all so head-scratching.

On Saturday night, as part of the presentation, player Lonzo Ball introduced a performance by his brother, rapper Gelo. The whole thing made me sad. It was like a high school talent show. I kept wondering where the Balls got a fourth brother from, because the other three—Lonzo, LaMelo, and LiAngelo—are all NBA players. Not super successful ones, (Lonzo hurt his knee and until this season, hadn’t played for two years!,) but still… So I looked it up, of course, to see just where Gelo fit in, and it turns-out—he is LiAngelo!!! There’s no fourth bro. His pro ball career didn’t pan out, so he became a rapper! Perhaps that’s why his All-Star performance was so weak. Seriously, I mean this with no snark; I feel bad for the dude. He was performing in front of his former fellow NBA players who were all aware that he didn’t make it in the league. I think we’d all be insecure in that circumstance. I actually feel bad for him. And for his bros, as well, to have the horrible father that they do. Growing-up could not have been easy for any of them.

I hate Draymond Green soooooo much!  It’s disgusting that TNT has him commentate. At all! And I think he has a contract with them for when he’s done playing. Ewww.

There was some incredibly rude woman who was sitting next to Oscar Robertson all weekend, but according to pix I researched, she’s not his wife, so perhaps a daughter. I really wish I could get to the bottom of it, (for all our sakes,) but no matter who she is, she never smiled once, (at least not when the cameras were on her,) and this is even worse—during the Three Point Shootout, she sat right next to the contestants, and…was chatting away on her phone!!! That is beyond rude! And so disrespectful to the sport that gave her first row seats throughout!

The rest of my thoughts here are about the actual new crazy All-Star Game set-up, which is actually an All-Star Tournament. And one of the four teams is not even composed of all-stars! It was almost entirely G League guys, who are the exact opposite of all-stars! (On top of that, only two of those half dozen players advertised in the image at the top of this column played in the main game!!! One wasn’t even there at all!)

The quick version is that on Friday night of the weekend, there was a four-team mini-tournament of “Rising Stars.” Three of the teams were comprised of rookies and second year players who are not stars by any stretch of the imagination. And one team was all guys from the aforementioned G League. The team who won then moved on to play on Sunday against one of the three teams made up of All-Stars. The twenty-four All-Stars were split into three teams—one of the older guys, one of the young guys, and one supposedly of the international guys—all who would play if there was a traditional All-Star Game. But the “old guys” team could’ve easily lost to the team of “nobody famous guys” because it’s not a real game; they played it just forty points. (For reference, usual All-Star Games final scores are around 184-172! So no guys this year can qualify for any records, which is just sad.)

As Cleveland Cavaliers star, (and another of my faves,) Donovan Mitchell said, I’m an East-West girl, so even though this format was a tad interesting, I prefer the old way. (I can’t wait to see what they decide to do with it in 2026!)

I hate to say it, but I agree with Draymond that the young Rising Stars guys do not belong in the “All-Star Tournament.” He kept ragging on it, even though his Warriors teammate, star Steph Curry, says that he, Steph, is the one who invented this new format! As Sunday evening went along, though, Draymond got more and more mean about it, taking shots at everyone. It was enough already. (Even Hall-of-Famer Oscar Robertson came out against his vitriol.) The mini-tourney was all interesting enough; I just don’t like change, especially in an All-Star situation. But some people, like even the great Charles Barkley, think it was necessary. Chuck said that if Draymond’s group of players hadn’t messed it all up, they would not have had to change anything. Mmmm.

It was incredibly rude of LeBron James to have dropped-out of the games a few minutes before it all started! He should have done so the day before, to give someone else the chance to participate in what would have been special to them. And he screwed his eight-man team by making them play with just seven!!! He knew his ankle was bad last week.

And how did the team of “Global Stars” include three Americans???

The whole thing was, to use Mr. X’s word, mush.

By the way, why were two of the players—Matas Buzelis on Saturday night and Steph Curry on Sunday—rocking two different color sneakers, which is the style that I started back in the day?! Why does everyone copy me???

They really did need Kevin Hart, who finally showed up to try to save the day. But there was waaaay too much of the guys talking before the games. Get the games going already!!!

I hate to say it, but they need a lot less of the commentators. The entire All-Star Game needs it be the East versus West again, more pure game action, more Kevin Hart, and a lot less talking!

This new format wasn’t fair to the team that won the first game; they had to sit for about forty more minutes than the second team did before they played the “title” game! That is soooo not fair. They totally cooled down and then had to get their beings back up to compete again.

And then on top of that, all of the action was paused…in the middle of the final game… for “a tribute to TNT!!!,” because this is the last year that the Turner network will broadcast the All-Star Game. (NBC takes over next year.) And it wasn’t just a short-ish video—it was about twenty minutes of speeches and tomfoolery! Who organized this mess???

It’s in Los Angeles next year, so I’m repeating—they need me to fix it all for them right now!

I’ll end with something stupid that I hate to report because it’s Charles Barkley who said it, and I adore him. But I must. Near the end of the coverage, he declared, “If it wasn’t for the fans and the players, the game would never be the same.”  What???  Of course it wouldn’t—without the players, there would be no game! That about sums-up this extremely, (save for Mac McClung,) dull and depressing week-end.

So now, it’s on to baseball for me. Go, Yanks and Mets!