There is a lot of talk about the drastic change to the NBA All-Star game this season, and LeBron James just added to it.
The word is the players from each conference who receive the most votes will become team captains and pick their own teams, doing away with the tradition East versus West matchup. But there are rumors that suggest the league is trying to let the captains pick their teams in private, and not televise the process.
But James, who recently had his conversation with Lonzo Ball outed by a hot microphone, said he wouldn’t mind if the picks were made on live TV, via Cleveland.com, suggesting that some things should be allowed to stay behind closed doors — like his comments to Ball.
“We’re all grown men,” James said. “It doesn’t stop your paycheck from coming. It won’t stop you from playing time when the season starts. Trying to win. Listen, just trying to win in the All-Star Game. You want to get the best player, the best caliber of player. You’re going to have some type of faithfulness, obviously, to your teammates. But also you want to compete. That’s when our game is watched the most, in All-Star weekend. That’s when all the countries come in, that’s when everybody is paying attention. Sunday hasn’t been so well the last few years and we want to try to make it much better.”
Part of the issue is some players could feel bad if they weren’t picked by their teammates, and by making the picks private, the league can mitigate that as much as possible.
But the teams still have to play the game, and people will watch. So fans will speculate about what the teams mean if they want to.
Either way, the change should make more a more completive All-Star game, something that event has lacked in recent years.