SALT LAKE CITY — There was one sequence on Sunday night that stirred an otherwise restless crowd at Vivint Arena, where a little competition emerged from a morass of largely undefended, half-speed highlights.
Jaylen Brown bided his time, dribbling up against his Boston Celtics teammate Jayson Tatum before launching a top-of-the-key 3-pointer in his face. On the jog back, Brown laughed underneath his black face mask as he put a hand toward the floor, the “too small” gesture for his 6-foot-8 fellow Celtic.
The fans, however, really got into it when Tatum issued a response nine seconds later, finding Brown on the other end and launching his own 3-pointer in his teammate’s face.
“We’ve played countless number of one-on-one games, scrimmages against each other,” said Tatum, who wound up taking home the Kobe Bryant MVP award with a record-setting 55 points. “We’ve always kind of brought the best out of each other. So it was a normal day for us. Just millions of people watching on one of the biggest stages, so we had a little fun with it.”
The biggest problem with the game, however, is that these fleeting moments were so few and far between.
Team LeBron coach Michael Malone might have been stirring up a little fire when he called the 184-175 Team Giannis win over his squad “the worst basketball game ever played,” but the comment prodded at a sentiment that seems to follow the All-Star Game every year. Less defense, less intensity, less watchable for the casual fan.
These cliched comments about NBA players not caring about defense might be less about the nature of the NBA than the nature of All-Star games: The NFL downgraded its annual Pro Bowl to a flag football event this year and the NHL has dealt with similar lack-of-intensity issues with its All-Star event. But it made some take notice that Sunday’s participants were among the game’s harshest critics.
“They put on a show for the fans,” Malone told reporters at his postgame scrum,…
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