On Sunday night, the NBA All-Star weekend festivities concluded with the game itself, which was really comprised of four 12-minute games as part of a round robin tournament. The younger American team ended up winning the event, having defeated a team full of older veterans from the US, as well as international players, in the tournament, with Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards winning the All-Star game MVP award.
The NBA has switched up the All-Star game format several times over the last few years in an attempt to wring some sort of competitive spirit out of the players, and the product did seem to be improved on Sunday in comparison to what we've seen previously.
However, that didn't stop St. John's head coach and basketball icon Rick Pitino from pitching another idea for the event moving forward.
“Great to see the new format with the All-Star game. I suggested to the NBA having a Ryder Cup with Basketball. Starting in Greece and then going back to the States. Would be incredible and even more popular than the Ryder Cup,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The NBA implementing its own version of golf's Ryder Cup would certainly be a sight to behold, and would continue the theme of US vs international players that began this year.
For the time being, it seems that the league is happy with what it saw from the players on Sunday night, as the game lived up to the billing and produced some entertainment for the fans in attendance at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.
Now, the league will move forward into the stretch run of the season, although Adam Silver and company still have a ton of questions on their hands, including around the rise of artificial intelligence, gambling, and many other factors that could have a major impact on the sport as we know it.
