The All-Star Game was the safest place in the world

Hardly any fouls or blocked shots on Sunday, but no solutions for what has become a basketball parody.

Karl-Anthony Towns

The box score should be bronzed, or stuffed into a time capsule. Three total fouls. Three blocked shots. Thirty-shot field goal attempts by Karl-Anthony Towns in 28 minutes of play. Twenty-three shots from beyond the arc by Damien Lillard, in 28 minutes.

When the best players in the world are given a carefree highway, frontiers have no chance. The East beat the West, 211-186, in Sunday’s All-Star Game. Yet the highlight of the weekend was a 3-point contest between Stephen Curry and Sabrina Ionescu, a quiet nod to the growing power and cohesion of the women’s game. All-Star Weekend has long been known as an unparalleled party, the Black Super Bowl in some quarters, and it certainly has become a vacation. The slam dunk winner, for the second consecutive year, was G-League mainstay Mac McClung, with only four games of NBA experience. He should be saluted for that, but the real princes of mid-air have no interest anymore. Is anybody old enough to remember Blake Griffin dunking over a car, or, better yet, the Julius Erving-Darnell Hillman spacewalks in the ABA that hatched the idea?

What do you do with this relic, which exists only to schmooze the sponsors? It has been curdled by the money. Anthony Davis said, quite sensibly, that it’s absurd to risk the health of a franchise, much less the health of these human conglomerates, in an exhibition game. Anthony Edwards, younger and less filtered, said it was a tough thing to ask these guys to get out of vacation mode and “compete.”

They all want to be All-Stars but they don’t really want to play the game. Fine. Do what the NFL does. On the night before the NBA Finals, in the city that will host Game 1, have an awards ceremony. Give out all the trophies and recognize the first, second and third team All-Stars. Send in the comics and the vocalists and the clowns.

If you want to give the whole NBA a week off in February, to alleviate the least interesting part of the long march, do that as well. Maybe that’s a good time to have the trade deadline, because it wouldn’t disrupt the rosters during actual play. Maybe that’s a good time to induct the newest 92 members of the Basketball Hall of Fame, instead of burying the bloated ceremony in the middle of September.

Or perhaps the All-Stars could still come together for some lower-risk activities that would allow us to see them as people — once we clear the room of their agents, image-makers, body men, bodyguards, and investors.

How about Pickleball? Name 32 All-Stars and have a tournament somewhere on Sunday morning. Make Curry serve from an adjacent parking lot.

How about theater? Kevin Durant has been aching to play Hamlet throughout his professional life. If Austin Reaves ever made the All-Star team he could be the Stage Manager, narrating events in Newark, Arkansas. LeBron James would make a fine Hamilton. And, of course, there’s Othello, in which Dame Emma Thompson could be cast next to Dame Lillard.

There are endless video game championships to settle, obviously, now that ESports have become so spectator-friendly. But old school table games might be interesting, too. Sure, Monopoly might have to be updated, especially the rent on Park Place, but Scrabble could bring the crowd to its feet. However, the words will be restricted to actual basketball names, teams, arenas and terms. Somebody just might get a Triple-Word score on “Antetokounmpo.” Talk about a dagger.

They could also play charades. Oh, you say they just did?

What we’d prefer is a reasonably competitive basketball game that brandishes the NBA’s talent without compromising anybody’s well-being. If commissioner Adam Silver really is as disappointed as he seems, he will greenlight a game between the NBA’s American players and the World’s players. Most people would testify that five of the NBA’s top seven players are not Americans, and the appeal of seeing Giannis, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, Joel Embiid and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on the same team is that they would open new vistas of ball-sharing, and passes that define a new geometry. Whether the NBA could stomach watching the American players lose is another question.

Sunday and Monday were good days for those who sit deep in their couches, empty the Cheez-It box, and question the competitiveness of our athletes. Angels’ third baseman Anthony Rendon said that playing baseball was not his “top priority.” For players with families, it shouldn’t be. But it was enough of a priority that Rendon wanted and got a $245 million contract. It was a seven-year deal that has three years left, and the Angels are marking each day on that calendar like a prisoner in solitary.

Rendon wll get $38 million per year through 2026. He has averaged 50 games per year in the first four years of the contract. Later on Monday, teammate Mike Trout said he was frustrated by the injuries he’s had and promised to get out there even if he was 60 percent. He has a family, too.

Baseball also has an All-Star Game, from which an increasing number of players withdraw. But at least the pitchers are trying to strike people out and the hitters are looking for hard contact and everyone is trying to dodge embarrassment, at the very least.

The NBA players resume work Thursday, after this episode of Tiptoeing With The Stars. That’s right, Thursday. What do you think these guys are, machines?

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