This weekend the NBA All Star Game brings together the most popular (not the best) players in the league, a bonanza of sponsorship deals, and 20 hours of useless television coverage. This is truly a corporate retreat run awry. I should not have to listen Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith reflect on their careers as professional basketball players for hours on end just to watch a few events that should take a little more than an two hours to complete.

The pre-All Star game event schedule is simply too crowded. They include the T-Mobile Rookie Challenge, the Sprite Slam Dunk Contest, the Foot Locker Three Point Shootout, the Playstation Skills Challenge, and Horse. The freaking names are too long and they include too many young players that nobody outside of their home city cares about.

The first step to fixing this log jam is by eliminating rookie challenge and the skills challenge. This leaves the dunk contest, the three point shoot out, and Bill Simmons’ favorite, Horse.

The Slam Dunk contest needs big names to matter. That means that if you cannot start on an NBA team you do not get to participate. Also, if Sprite wants to continue to sponsor the event the player they are using to pimp their product must participate. That means LeBorn James would be under contractual obligation to wow the crowd.

The rest of the field should include past winners and players who consistently appear on ESPN highlights. That means Dwight Howard, Vince Carter, and Dwayne Wade should fill out the competition. With all apologies to the rookies and pint sized New York Knicks guard Nate Robinson (he needed like 30 dunks to win it, sorry Knicks fan he’s a no go) should watch it from the sidelines. Nobody can deny that would be an unbelievable group of names and would triple the ratings.

The next event, the three point contest would be tweaked. Instead of current players who can stroke it, former players turned GMs would play to save their jobs. That means this years field would include Steve Kerr of the mind boggling disastrous Phoenix Suns, John Paxson of the lost and confused Chicago Bulls, Joe Dumars of the falling Detroit Pistons, and Mike Dunleavy of the simply terrible Los Angeles Clippers would round out the field.

I think watching these guys shoot in desperation for their jobs would be entertaining and cathartic. The winner would get to keep there job for another season while the other three would have to face the ax after the season was over.

The game of Horse would be between Michael Jordan and Larry Bird every year until one of them is unable to support themselves in an upright position. The winner would get a Big Mac.

Thank you YoutTube and nigrigsjb for keeping priceless memories alive

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