You're tuned into Heat Check with Triste Quick On this episode of the Heat Check.
All Star Game is over, folks, Yes, sir, it's time for us to move forward. We are gonna break down the good, the bad, the ugly. Speaking of ugly, Nate McMillan.
Gets fired another one bites the dust. Atlanta is now looking for a.
New head coach, and Russ and Kevin Love also changed teams. Just over twenty games left in the regular season, Nicks, so do me a favor and drop that generic gass beat. All right, So this extravaganza in Salt Lake City, Utah has come and gone. Everybody's take pretty much from the game is that's stunk.
I also thought it stunk.
I thought, what are you gonna really ask for when there's multiple stars that are out for injuries and the injury reserves and all of these things, considering.
That it is just a game. It is not just a game. It's an exhibition game. Let's be honest.
I listed players who one hundred percent would phone it in, and every single one of them did. Nicole Jokich had four points, Luca had four points. Do I hate on them for not trying?
No like Luca sometimes needs a break.
Okay, he wanted to go to Mexico and he went to your little event and he played. Okay, he showed up better than you can say for Trey Young. It is a great opportunity for late nights hanging out with other superstars.
It is like an NBA convention. That's basically what it is. It's like a trade show for the NBA and people who are around the NBA.
The fact that there's fans there and that there's a TV event that's basically subsidizing this little party. They do not care about the person or people responsible for some their party.
They just want to party.
I do not also buy into the fact that the ratings were so bad that they're gonna hurt the league in the next round of the media negotiations. That is bullshit. That is absolute poppycock. The All Star Game is not It is not the corner stone of a season, and it took a back seat to the trade deadline, which is, if we're being honest, what's even more important than the All Star Game.
So, yeah, the game wasn't fun to watch.
People had ideas about how to fix it. I also have ideas, as usual about how to fix things. One of my ideas went viral a few days ago. My tweet was this the only way to fix the All Star Game. You pit the US versus the rest of the world and see them duke it out like hunger games.
Think about it. Team USA, who's on that team?
You got Steph Lebron has to start, Kevin Durant, Tatum ad That's like pretty standard starting five. And then for the bench, you've got jaw Jaylen Brown, Damian Lillard, Donovan Mitchell, Devin Booker, Kyrie At, Daron Fox, Kawhi, Jared Allen. So that's my that's my All Star team for the US.
And then Team World. Man, this is a squad.
You got shay Giljes Alexander, you got Luka, Doncic, you got Jannis Embiid and Jokic my god. Then on the off the bench, you got Demonic Sabonis, Marknen, Ben Mathern, Pascal Siakam, Andrew Wiggins, Rudy Gobert, Jamal Murray, og Annon, Nobi, Josh Giddy, Franz Wagner, DeAndre Ayton, from the Caribbean, christ As Porzingis, Jeremy Sohan, Steven.
Adams come on, now, come on, now.
I think at that point you'd have to put it in a city where there was nothing else to do but whoop. It would be have to be a separate week There is zero chants that Luca and Jokic would mail it in if it meant they were fighting for their country. They were fighting to say that the world was better than America. They've got competitive nature running through their veins, and you know what they don't want to do is to make it seem like America is the
only thing that matters. They played internationally. This is an international fit. Easy fix, Adam easy. I am giving Adam Silver a multi billion dollar idea for free.
So just do it.
Fifteen American All Stars, fifteen non American All Stars. Winning team gets bragging.
Rights for the year. Make it a whole thing. This is the only chance that you have.
As for the rest of the All Star weekend, it was pretty good. What except for the skills competition. That shit's gotta go. We gotta have some sort of substitute for what that was. It's confusing, it's on the wrong night. There's no drama. I honestly don't know who thought watching the Antitukunpo brothers throw bounce passes into a tire would make for a great TV. Like, I don't know why we wanted to Team Utah other than the fact that they were in Utah. There needs to be another replacement
for this. Also, the Celebrity Basketball Game, I don't know.
About that either.
Yeah, I mean, the only reason I'm even slightly optimistic is because I am hoping that someday maybe I can play in it. That's the only reason is I can get on TV just to play basketball. Other than that, I could take it or leave it. The Rising Stars Game, that was probably the best thing that we saw, besides maybe the dunk contest. Jose Alvarado is being micd up the entire time, which was great. He gets the MVP
after him and Donovan Mitchell go back and forth. He makes a bet with Donovan Mitchell that he was going to hit a game winner, and that was pretty fun. You got to see G leaguers like Scoot come out and play some basketball again.
In the All Star Game. You could have had Victor wam Nyama play right now. Would have been very interesting, wouldn't it.
And like listen, you got to see the G league play and realize why they're not.
In the league yet.
Let's be honest, these you gotta while to go. You're like fresh chicken out of a pack, you know what I mean. You're still a little wet behind the ears. We gotta put a little seasoning on you. We gotta put a little uh just marinate. You gotta marinate in the bag a little bit more scoot before you play in the NBA.
The three point Contest was for me a highlight.
I did predict that Damian Lillard was going to win it because he went to Weaver State.
That's not why I loved it, even though that was a nice little piece of vindication.
But lots of guys were struggling, and I love to see pro struggle in any sport. Tyler hero looked not like a hero. Kevin Herder looked like he had no business being in that contests.
Randall looked like he snuck in to the tournament. He did. It was so painful. His son cried and then boot him. It was so bad. That's not even a joke that happened.
Tyrese Halliburton, which his shooting stroke. I understand why scouts were like, I'm not sure if this kid can can.
Do it, but he can. He can really shoot.
Tyrese Haliburton set a record with thirty one points in the first round, and his little hitch was so ugly.
I don't even know how he makes shots. Honestly, I don't. I don't know how he does it.
It takes so long to get the ball. It's almost like there's a glitch in the system, you know, and he's trying to re get the system to work smooth.
But it was all daytime. Man. He came out crushed it.
He lit through the final rack to win his first three point contest.
Then he rolled off on the Sunday. He's done.
He's never probably doing it again. He wanted one for the resume. I'll probably never.
See him back.
And then a quick little question I have for people who make these little cute T shirts and sweatshirts and stuff. How come there weren't any parody shirts made that I could have bought that said twenty twenty three NBA All Star slut like Salt Lake City Utah slut like that should have been an easy thing for the people on the internet to do, but they didn't. But they didn't, And Finally, the Dunk Contest was awesome. No one on earth wanted to watch the Dunk Contest and it ended
up being an electric factory. It's been so bad for so many years outside of the Zach Lavine and Aaron Gordon Contest, that we were just making fun of Mac McClung before we even saw Mac McClung. And you know what, he single handedly saved the Dunk Contest. And now they want to know if he'll play in the Dunk Contest for his entire life, Like, hey, that's what you do.
Now.
You come out and we know your name, we know what you look like, we've seen your face. We're happy with you in here now, and now you have to come back every year, and so I think he will, but the question remains.
Stephen A.
Smith talked about this, which is wild. People are asking why the Dunk Contest doesn't have major stars in it anymore. Stephen A thinks Lebron killed it because Lebron didn't do it. Now all the other stars are following suit, so he ruined it himself. His one decision set the dominoes off. But people are now asking everyone, hey, Dunk Contest is kind of fun Are you going to enter it next year?
They asked Jaw. They asked Aunt Edwards. You can scratch Aunt Edward's off of your thoughts about him being in the dunk contest? Why well listen to what he had to.
Say now, Reggie Miller, are a lot of guys want to know, could you plausibly get in the dunk contest one of these?
Nope? No, come on and stop playing. Nope.
I just like dunking ok people. Man, whoa you heard that?
Reggie like dunk old? Yeah, I think that sounds about right. I just like dunking on people. Ditto for Ja Morant. These guys want to be dunking in game. They want to fly down the lane. They want to stuff the basketball down your throat. They want to embarrass who's ever standing there. They want to posterize you. They want to demolished your ego, put it into a little package, wrap it up in a bow, and take your ego home with them and put it on another night stand.
That's what they want to do.
If there's nobody standing underneath the rim, what fun is it really to dunk? If you're someone like Ja Morant and Edwards? I actually kind of get that everything else is kind of like a fake dunk. A real dunk is what you do in a game when you murder somebody. The rest is kind of pageantry. Frankly, far more interested in seeing that than I am watching the dunk contest.
But those McClung dunks were
Sick, and he's probably gonna end up being are a little poster child for the Dunk Contest for the next fifteen years, so good for him.