Ant is an All Star

Any And All Things T-Wolves Related
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Monster
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Re: Ant is an All Star

Post by Monster »

thedoper wrote:
CoolBreeze44 wrote:As a middle aged white guy I'm curious, did anyone find any element of entertainment in that halftime performance? I enjoy a wide variety of music, from 80's butt rock to Ariana Grande, but that didn't make sense to me.


NBA has been pretty intentional in developing Africa, there are multiple players in this game who started playing there. I think they view it as pretty untapped. Good music, I had no idea who any of them were though.


I wasn't aware of the term butt rock. This is why I keep coming back to this forum.

Also all I have seen of all-star weekend was the dunk contest highlights.
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davemang
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Re: Ant is an All Star

Post by davemang »

Since the all-star weekend really isn't worth it's own thread:
Mac McClung was the highlight of the weekend. Unbelievable ups and some decent showmanship, making super high difficulty dunks on the first try without any gimmicks. He looks like a 90s point guard throwing down a super unrealistic dunk in NBA jam.

The "grand theft alverado" gimmick for the trey murphy's opening dunk was actually pretty well done - he "missed" a bounce pass alley oop to himself, gathered the ball, then dribbled back outside the paint hyping the crowd while alverado ran out from the baseline to "steal' it from him and then passed it off the backboard for a 360 alley-oop finish from trey.

NBA skills competition is a complete joke.

3 pt competition is still the only real "competitive" event during all star weekend, so it still is fairly enjoyable - watching Halliburton effortlessly swish balls with barely on shot motion was pretty interesting, but clunkers from Randle, Herro, and Huerter were tough to watch. Ultimately Dame is just so good and took home the hardware.
Our boy Luka Garza was a captain in the G-league next up game, with the squad he drafted winning and Luka taking home MVP with 23 / 8 on 9/16 shooting. I sped through this one, but it was a little bit more competitive than the ASG, kinda like a summer league game with less defense and more than a couple guys who can actually make buckets.

The ASG itself was pretty awful. You could tell most guys didn't really want to be there, ant included. The coaches even commented on how bad it was...

Overall pretty rough weekend with very few things that really serve the fans and actually show off the skills of these world class athletes.
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kekgeek
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Re: Ant is an All Star

Post by kekgeek »

Ya I know they want to add that mid season tournament. I just don't know how they get players to try in that.
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Coolbreeze44
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Re: Ant is an All Star

Post by Coolbreeze44 »

If you wanted to drive to the basket, you were allowed to score every single time. The only differentiator in the game was outside shooting.
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SameOldNudityDrew
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Re: Ant is an All Star

Post by SameOldNudityDrew »

kekgeek1 wrote:Ya I know they want to add that mid season tournament. I just don't know how they get players to try in that.


I'd like to see that happen. Here are some ways they could consider to get the players to buy in.

[list]
[*] Shorten the regular season. As I understand it, they'd have to pay off the regional networks that have stood in the way for the games they'll miss on contracts already signed. But after buying those games out, they can stop teams from signing new contracts that promise more games than the new limited schedule would allow. Game ticket prices would probably go up somewhat, but I don't think they'll really lose a lot of TV licensing value, and the mid-season tourney would actually probably bring in more revenue to the league as a whole, which could be further distributed to the teams and players. The game's just getting too popular for the league not to keep making money hand over fist. They don't need 82 games to keep doing that. They should cut enough games that even the team that lasts the longest in the mid-season tournament would not play more than 82 games before the end-of-season playoffs begin.
[*] Give cash awards to the top-finishing teams in the mid-season tournament.
[*] Reform the draft lottery to include all 30 teams and actually award teams slightly BETTER lottery odds than they'd otherwise get for finishing at the top of the mid-season tournament and maybe also the end-of-season playoffs. The odds should still be progressive based on regular-season games to promote parity overall, but a little lottery odds boost would be a nice incentive in the mid-season tournament and playoffs (at least for the fans). Time to reward teams a little bit for doing WELL when it really counts, even though the regular season standings should still carry the most weight to keep the league balanced.
[*] Keep scheduling games in a way that limits travel time for these teams. They've done it more lately and it makes sense to reduce travel for the teams, which would probably boost their willingness to do a tournament-type of thing. If you play against a team on the road once, might as well play them again in the next couple of nights before moving on.
[list]

And while they're at it . . .

[list]
[*] To fight tanking during the regular season, pick a random date every year before the season starts that falls sometime between 50%-80% of the way through the regular season schedule and DON'T publicly announce it until after 80% of the games have been played. Then the base draft lottery odds will be based on the standings on THAT date. Because it will be unknown, teams will be disincentivized from blatantly tanking and there will be basically NO benefit to tanking during the last 20% of the season, which will make the playoff race even more interesting because there will be fewer pushover games.
[*] Keep the play-in tournament at the end of the season. It's awesome.
[*] Adopt ELAM endings in the mid-season tournament and the G-League. Then when everybody realizes how much better that is, they'll soon be clamoring for that in all games!
[*] Honestly, consider scrapping the All-Star Game or at least incorporating elements of it into the mid-season tournament to boost revenue. It's basically a joke at this point.
[/list]
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KiwiMatt
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Re: Ant is an All Star

Post by KiwiMatt »

All Star weekend has really taken a dive in the last five years. I have zero interest in watching a game like that, it's a complete circus of uninspiring basketball. Who wants to watch Damian Lillard take half court shots every time he gets the ball? It isn't a good look.

Bring back the East vs West theme and make it competitive. Maybe the winning team donates proceeds to charity of their choice or something like that so they actually play with a little bit of heart and fire.
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Monster
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Re: Ant is an All Star

Post by Monster »

KiwiMatt wrote:All Star weekend has really taken a dive in the last five years. I have zero interest in watching a game like that, it's a complete circus of uninspiring basketball. Who wants to watch Damian Lillard take half court shots every time he gets the ball? It isn't a good look.

Bring back the East vs West theme and make it competitive. Maybe the winning team donates proceeds to charity of their choice or something like that so they actually play with a little bit of heart and fire.


Or here is another option...just don't care. I don't even watch all the Wolves games so I really don't mind not watching another game. I watched some really bad basketball this weekend at a HS tournament. I enjoyed it partly because I got to meet some new people and catch up with a good friend from HS I hadn't talked to in years. Anywho back in the day when I was much younger when there was a limited amount of NBA games I could see then yeah I would have watched the AS game but now? Eh...I don't even care if it's competitive or whatever I wouldn't watch it anyways.
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TAFKASP
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Re: Ant is an All Star

Post by TAFKASP »

monsterpile wrote:
KiwiMatt wrote:All Star weekend has really taken a dive in the last five years. I have zero interest in watching a game like that, it's a complete circus of uninspiring basketball. Who wants to watch Damian Lillard take half court shots every time he gets the ball? It isn't a good look.

Bring back the East vs West theme and make it competitive. Maybe the winning team donates proceeds to charity of their choice or something like that so they actually play with a little bit of heart and fire.


Or here is another option...just don't care. I don't even watch all the Wolves games so I really don't mind not watching another game. I watched some really bad basketball this weekend at a HS tournament. I enjoyed it partly because I got to meet some new people and catch up with a good friend from HS I hadn't talked to in years. Anywho back in the day when I was much younger when there was a limited amount of NBA games I could see then yeah I would have watched the AS game but now? Eh...I don't even care if it's competitive or whatever I wouldn't watch it anyways.

This team can make it hard to care about real games so yeah, I don't much care about an All-Star game. It's nice for the players to get the recognition, but as a fan, whatever. I feel the same way about the other sports too.
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thedoper
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Re: Ant is an All Star

Post by thedoper »

I try not to criticize the all star games in any sport since they are ultimately for kids. They intentionally shouldnt be taken seriously. Let the kids have them.
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