Putting a bow on All-Star Weekend

Tonight I’m supposed to tie a bow on All-Star Weekend. To wrap up what the event meant to Salt Lake City and the state of Utah, to determine if it was all as successful as everyone had hoped it would be.

It’s a tall task that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull off.

To be perfectly honest with you, everything was feeling like a huge blur, with the days all bleeding into one another. My coverage of All-Star Weekend started well before the weekend and by Saturday afternoon I was running on fumes and just waiting for the whole thing to be done. 

But on Saturday night, as I watched how much fun Jazz rookie Walker Kessler was having becoming an All-Star Skills Challenge champion alongside Collin Sexton and Jordan Clarkson, and then watched Mac McClung breathe life back into the Dunk Contest, I remembered what this weekend is about.

All-Star Weekend is a celebration of basketball. It allows greatness to have its moment and it showcases the most impressive talent from the most powerful basketball league in the world.

It’s also a celebration of the host city and a chance for the NBA world to see a side of that city and state that they usually don’t see throughout the dregs of the regular season.

Lastly, it’s a show. All-Star Weekend is meant to be entertainment that shows the fans a good time and that includes fans far beyond where the weekend is hosted.

So was this a successful All-Star Weekend? Was basketball celebrated properly? Was the host city celebrated and given its due? Did the fans get a good show?

In short, yes.

1 of 119

2 of 119

3 of 119

4 of 119

5 of 119

6 of 119

7 of 119

8 of 119

9 of 119

10 of 119

11 of 119

12 of 119

13 of 119

14 of 119

15 of 119

16 of 119

17 of 119

18 of 119

19 of 119

20 of 119

21 of 119

22 of 119

23 of 119

24 of 119

25 of 119

26 of 119

27 of 119

28 of 119

29 of 119

30 of 119

31 of 119

32 of 119

33 of 119

34 of 119

35 of 119

36 of 119

37 of 119

38 of 119

39 of 119

40 of 119

41 of 119

42 of 119

43 of 119

44 of 119

45 of 119

46 of 119

47 of 119

48 of 119

49 of 119

50 of 119

51 of 119

52 of 119

53 of 119

54 of 119

55 of 119

56 of 119

57 of 119

58 of 119

59 of 119

60 of 119

61 of 119

62 of 119

63 of 119

64 of 119

65 of 119

66 of 119

67 of 119

68 of 119

69 of 119

70 of 119

71 of 119

72 of 119

73 of 119

74 of 119

75 of 119

76 of 119

77 of 119

78 of 119

79 of 119

80 of 119

81 of 119

82 of 119

83 of 119

84 of 119

85 of 119

86 of 119

87 of 119

88 of 119

89 of 119

90 of 119

91 of 119

92 of 119

93 of 119

94 of 119

95 of 119

96 of 119

97 of 119

98 of 119

99 of 119

100 of 119

101 of 119

102 of 119

103 of 119

104 of 119

105 of 119

106 of 119

107 of 119

108 of 119

109 of 119

110 of 119

111 of 119

112 of 119

113 of 119

114 of 119

115 of 119

116 of 119

117 of 119

118 of 119

119 of 119

Celebrating basketball

For the most indoctrinated hoops junkie (me) anytime a basketball touches the court is a celebration. Basketball is poetry personified and is as brutal as a fight but as graceful as a ballet. Basketball incorporates skill and focus and talent, but also leaves room for humor and family, joy and fun.

The first celebration we need to think about when it comes to All-Star Weekend is the All-Stars themselves. The players that embody all of those poetic qualities on the court. Sure, there are some players who become jaded, who don’t want the attention, or who maybe lose their appreciation over time. But for first-time All-Stars and for those who still have a deep love of the game, you can see on their faces how much this weekend means to them.

LeBron James is a 19-time All-Star, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and one of the greatest basketball players of all time and still, when he was introduced on Sunday night, a smile spread across his face as the crowd cheered.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP and seven-time All-Star, is nursing an injured wrist. He had absolutely no obligation to even step foot on the court on Sunday night or show up for the Skills Challenge on Saturday. 

But he was there, supporting his brothers, laughing, taking pictures, letting his young children run on the court. He played just 20 seconds in the All-Star Game, quickly getting in a dunk before intentionally fouling so that he could exit the game. He didn’t have to be out there, but was happy to be.

Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen paid for an entire suite so that his wife and children could celebrate Sunday night with a whole host of family and friends that Markkanen flew in from Finland. If the All-Star Game weren’t special, if it wasn’t something that mattered to players, they wouldn’t go through all the trouble.

Making sure that the All-Stars are celebrated properly and that they enjoy themselves throughout the weekend is a huge part of the whole All-Star experience.

The NBA and Utah not only celebrated the current All-Stars, but also paid homage to the All-Stars of yesteryear and to NBA legends no longer with us.

At Vivint Arena on Sunday night, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone, the top-3 all-time leader scorers were honored. Dan Roberts, who has been the PA announcer for the Jazz for 44 years was honored. Pau Gasol was honored for his work as an advocate for the WNBA and women’s and girl’s basketball.

Basketball was celebrated from beginning to end in Utah and deservedly so.

Celebrating Utah

You might have heard that Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal were making fun of Utah during Sunday’s broadcast, and that’s probably going to really rub people the wrong way. But the opinions of those ultra-rich guys who aren’t going to ever go out of their way to spend time in Utah should not be the opinions you pay attention to.

I can’t even count how many NBA reporters, television analysts, visiting fans from other cities and countries commented on the beauty of Salt Lake and Utah. On multiple occasions people told me how much they enjoyed the food, people told me they were staying past the weekend to go visit the national parks, people said that they wanted to come back to see more.

Those are the opinions that matter. Certainly there was a push to entice corporations and tech companies and rich people to invest and see Utah in a different light, one that would make them want to bring their business here. But those aren’t really the opinions or decisions that matter to me and I don’t think I’m alone on that.

There was a ton of money raised for charity on behalf of NBA players, there were food banks that saw an increase in donations because of the NBA’s presence, there were local businesses that were visited more, there were restaurants that were booked solid, which meant there were restaurant workers who were able to work more and make more.

There was a lot of good done over this weekend and there are a lot of people who are coming away with a positive impression from their time in Utah. So who cares what Shaq thinks.

1 of 17

2 of 17

3 of 17

4 of 17

5 of 17

6 of 17

7 of 17

8 of 17

9 of 17

10 of 17

11 of 17

12 of 17

13 of 17

14 of 17

15 of 17

16 of 17

17 of 17

Putting on a show

I already mentioned McClung, whose dunks were just some of the best I’ve seen since Aaron Gordon and Zach LaVine ruled the Dunk Contest, but the show didn’t start or stop there.

The Jazz trio won the Skills Challenge, Weber State alum Damian Lillard won the 3-point Contest and earlier on Saturday night Tyrese Haliburton had one of the best shooting stretches in All-Star history in the opening round of the 3-point shootout.

On Sunday night, Markkanen was one of the first to score in the All-Star Game and it came on a lob from none other than Donovan Mitchell.

Post Malone opened the night with a performance with 21 Savage. There were incredible dunks, huge highlight plays, celebrity appearances and an incredible all-Nigerian halftime show featuring Burna Boy, Rema and Tems.

Jayson Tatum and Boston Celtics teammate Jaylen Brown ended up dueling each other for portions of the All-Star Game before Tatum went on to break the all-time All-Star scoring record, finishing with 55 on the night.

I understand that there are people who are very mad about the price of some of these events, especially All-Star Saturday night and the All-Star Game. There are definitely reasons to be mad about regular fans being priced out of these events.

But, I also heard from a lot of fans who attended some of the more affordable events and had a ton of fun over the weekend. From the NBA Crossover event, to the All-Star practice and Rising Stars Tournament, as well as the HBCU Classic and G League Next Up Game, fans showed out for just about everything.

1 of 22

2 of 22

3 of 22

4 of 22

5 of 22

6 of 22

7 of 22

8 of 22

9 of 22

10 of 22

11 of 22

12 of 22

13 of 22

14 of 22

15 of 22

16 of 22

17 of 22

18 of 22

19 of 22

20 of 22

21 of 22

22 of 22

The more stories I heard from fans the more I thought about what Kenny ‘The Jet’ Smith said on Thursday when he was interviewed by local reporters.

“It’s just walking trading cards in Utah right now,” Smith said.

Fans ran into celebrities and NBA superstars out and about in Salt Lake City, at different events, on the concourse at the arena and were able to interact with them in a way that they normally wouldn’t be able to.

And we have to remember that this isn’t just about the local angle. All-Star Weekend is a global event. Markkanen said that even his family in Finland would watch the All-Star Game when he was growing up.

A total of 73 international broadcast partners televised the All-Star festivities this year reaching fans in 214 countries. People from all over the world were able to tune in. So yeah, the NBA put on a good show. 

Nothing is perfect

The thing is, to fully embrace and celebrate something means acknowledging, the good and the bad, the perfections and the flaws.

Through the weekend, the NBA and those who love it had to face some hard truths.

There was a lot of controversy surrounding Malone and how much he was celebrated over the weekend considering his troubled past which has garnered more attention since his playing days.

There were many who questioned why more Jazz greats weren’t a part of the main event festivities and were left without answers to those questions.

Outside Vivint Arena on Sunday, protesters gathered to voice concerns over how the city handled the unsheltered people of Salt Lake, especially leading up to the All-Star Game.

As stated above, many fans come away from All-Star Weekend feeling like the city was taken over and that it just ended up being an event for rich people, with prices to the headlining events costing more than some people’s rent.

1 of 16

2 of 16

3 of 16

4 of 16

5 of 16

6 of 16

7 of 16

8 of 16

9 of 16

10 of 16

11 of 16

12 of 16

13 of 16

14 of 16

15 of 16

16 of 16

In his annual address Adam Silver said that All-Star Weekend would have an economic impact of nearly $280 million in Utah. Those aren’t numbers that I can confirm and I don’t even know how you calculate something like that beyond hotel and transportation costs. But, does the potential economic impact outweigh the potentially damaging or controversial parts of the weekend? I’m not really sure.

I think that the best thing we can do when trying to decide if the All-Star Weekend hosted in Utah was a success, is look at the whole picture. We should make note of the ugly parts, admit the flaws and own up to what can be done better, while appreciating all of the things that were done well.