Few things were higher up on Adam Silver’s list of priorities in the lead-up to this NBA season than bringing back some level of competitiveness to the All-Star Game. The league (and, specifically, Silver) explicitly wanted the game to be more competitive after a few years of guys never getting out of first gear, but instead, the 2024 version of the event made a mockery of that vision, with the Eastern Conference beating the Western Conference 211-186.
There were plenty of fun moments during the game, although basically all of them centered around how guys just were not taking it seriously. While speaking to the media after the game, Los Angeles Lakers star Anthony Davis identified his favorite thing that happened on Sunday night in Indianapolis, and he picked, well, let’s say something a little unorthodox.
“I think the best [moment], we were talking about it, was the Bulls and the Pacers dunkers,” Davis said, according to Tim Bontemps of ESPN. “With the trampoline? They were very, very impressive.”
I will now apologize for embedding a video of my own tweet, but in fairness to AD, the timeout segment involving these trampoline dunkers was spectacular, and you could see that players on the Western Conference’s bench were having a blast watching them.
KD and especially steph (along with all the other west dudes) had so much fun watching dudes dunk off of trampolines pic.twitter.com/eUEOIDaB6z
— Bill DiFilippo (@billdifilippo) February 19, 2024
Having said that, with how important it was to the NBA that the game was taken seriously, we cannot imagine that Davis saying the best part of the All-Star Game was an act that happened during a timeout will be especially popular with some folks in the league office.