All-star games fail to shine in this fan’s eyes

by Ben Wickert
For The Post

Last weekend something dawned on me — for the first time I could remember, the NBA all-star game and the NFL Pro Bowl fell on the same weekend. Due to the Sept. 11 attacks the NFL season, and consequently the Pro Bowl, was pushed back a week.

Wow, I marveled, the best professional basketball and football players in the world will convene in two American cities on the same weekend. Then, after really thinking about it, I realized something: To me, these two showcases generated about as much excitement as Shively dining hall’s leftover meatloaf.

Take the Pro Bowl, for instance. The fact the game takes place in Hawaii eliminates any possibility of a truly competitive game. I traveled to Hawaii last summer, and I’ll tell you one thing: Playing football was one of the last things I wanted to do on a beach.

If it was that bad for me, imagine the NFL’s best. The list of concussions, broken bones, torn ligaments and other ailments was probably longer than the Pro Bowl rosters themselves. The players from the Super Bowl teams had not had a day off since the beginning of last summer. Can you really blame them for not putting their full effort into a meaningless game, played in paradise?

The NBA all-star game differs from the Pro Bowl. Wedged in the middle of the regular season, its festivities include slam-dunk and three-point contests. Like the Pro Bowl, the all-star game is its respective league’s display of premier talent.

But the NBA all-star game lacks one critical element: defense! The final score of Sunday’s game, a Western Conference victory, was 135-120. The game resembled, more or less, a professional game of pig in which the participants could dunk.

West head coach Don Nelson had an interesting assessment of the game.

"We just … let the guys play and have a good time, but we did want to win the game," Nelson said in an ESPN interview. "I told them to (do) the little things that made them all-stars, which is to play both ends of the floor."

Right on coach, I thought. After seeing the results of these two sporting events involving some of the best athletes in the world, I still am not sorry I watched The Simpsons Sunday.

--Wickert is a freshman journalism major who still can’t dunk. Send him an e-mail at post_sports@hotmail.com.