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Players, Coaches And Fans Sound Off After Horrific NBA All-Star Game

#NBA All-Star Game
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The NBA All-Star Game has officially lost the plot.

Sure, the All-Star game has always (or at least) been a bit of a farce when it comes to real competition. And that’s reasonable. After all, there’s nothing on the line and the game is in the middle of a long, difficult season.

But Sunday night’s matchup between Team LeBron and Team Giannis may have set an entirely new bar for what it means to not care about the All-Star game.

Team Giannis defeated Team LeBron, 184-175, in a game where nary a second a defense of was played. But that’s not new. Defense and the All-Star game don’t exactly go hand-in-hand and that’s mostly fine. This, however, was next level.

Whereas players normally play the All-Star game at around 25 percent intensity, Sunday night’s game was somewhere closer to 10 percent.

It was so bad that even the players and coaches themselves criticized the showing afterward. Team LeBron coach Mike Malone was particularly critical.

“It’s an honor to be here, and it’s an honor to be a part of great weekend with great players, but it’s the worst basketball game ever played,” Malone said.

“I don’t know if you can fix it. I give Joel Embiid and Kyrie Irving [credit], those two guys were competing. They tried to get some defense in. No one got hurt, they put on a show for the fans, but that’s a tough game to sit through, I’m not gonna lie,” Malone added.

Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown was also unhappy.

Brown said that the game wasn’t basketball, and that it more accurately represented a glorified “layup line.”

Reporters didn’t hold back either.

And many fans called it the worst All-Star game they’d ever seen.

It’s hard to see how the NBA can fix the game. But for the league’s sake, it better figure it out.