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That's code HOOPS for new customers to get 150 in bonus bets. When you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-Gambler in New York, call 877-8-Hopeny or text Hopeny to 467-369 in Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org Please play responsibly on behalf of Boot Hill Casino and Resort in Kansas. 21 plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void. In Ontario, bonus bets expire 100 issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG Co B Ball. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Monday everybody. Hope all of you guys had a great weekend. We're gonna get into All Star Weekend today with our five major takeaways from this year's All Star Weekend. We're going to talk a little bit about the new format. I want to talk about what a one on one tournament would look like in the NBA. I actually put together like a sample tournament and like talked through it bracket style which will be a fun one for us. We're talking a little bit about LeBron showing up late. We're going to talk a little bit about the dunk contest and then Draymond Green just went on a rampage. Just on the NBA over the weekend. I want to talk a little bit about that at the tail end. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on twitter@_jasonlt so you guys don't miss any show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed. Wherever you get, wherever you get your podcast on our Hoops tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We're releasing content throughout the year. Make sure you guys follow us there. And last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. We're going to be hitting mailbags on Fridays throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So first major takeaway out of five today. Thoughts on the new format. I actually really liked the tournament format with shorter Elam ending style games. I'm generally a huge fan of the Elam ending. I think that it turns it into a contest of basketball instead of some weird gamesmanship at the tail end of games. I also think shortening the games makes it so that there's less opportunity for cheap baskets. You know, you're out there for a shorter period of time. It just kind of like naturally breeds a tiny bit of urgency. And as far as the turn turnnament format goes, it advances the teams that are playing harder. So like I, I think that makes sense. Like if there's a couple of all stars out there that are, that don't give a shit, get them eliminated in the first game and then have the guys that want to play hard play in the second game, I, I think the format makes sense. I saw Sam Amico tweet a quote from an NBA GM that said quote Adam Silver is obsessed with tournaments playing in season now All Star. They've not proven to benefit our league and I just completely disagree with that line of thinking. I think the play in tournament is great because it just gives us more high leverage basketball. Those have been excellent games. When the play in tournament is on, we all want to watch and I think that that is just a case enough for it. It gives you just a little bit of, of interesting basketball to kind of bridge that gap between the regular season in the playoffs. The in season tournament is only two years old, but I already like it and I wish they'd expand it. I'd make it a 16 team tournament. Just add another round, same sort of thing. I think we get high leverage basketball in December. It's a great way to like scratch that itch, so to speak. Our desire to watch high leverage basketball in the middle of a regular season that can drag on like it goes October, November, December, January, February March, April, we're talking six months here solid if you count the cut off the half of April and the half of of October. Six straight months of basketball. And if you can bridge it so that two months in we have the in season tournament and two months in we have trade deadline, all star break type of stuff, it just kind of like provides some tent poles. You don't have as much slack there in the middle where we all get bored. Right? So like I'm a big believer that the inseason tournament is good for the NBA. And as for All Star, I mean here's the thing. Last night was by far the hardest that those guys have played in the last few years. There were two things that cheapened it a little bit for me. Like I, I agree with Draymond. Like I just don't see the point in letting non All Stars play with the all Stars. Like I was intrigued by it. Like I wanted to see what it would, what would look like. I just wanted to see the young kids come in there and play super hard and see if that would trigger something. And it did to a certain extent. But they're not All Stars. And I think there's a way to do the exact same format and instead of doing three eight man all star teams, just do four six man all star teams and let them run that same exact format. And you get to see all All Stars playing. And then also I just get rid of the gimmicks. Like I was watch Victor Wenyama and Jiren Jackson play super hard and try to change the dynamic of the All Star game. And I'm listening to Kevin Hart do standup in the background or like the inside the NBA crew just like shooting the. I was actually embarrassed for the league during some of that stuff, especially the Mr. Beast one where like Mr. Beast is out there like distracting the kid while he's trying to shoot. He's like making these weird comments about Dame missing a couple of jump shots like that. It was all just really weird. I saw someone on Twitter say the NBA has lost the plot because we just want to see the best players in the world play basketball. And I couldn't, I could not agree more. Get rid of the lower level players, get rid of the gimmicks, or at least move them to the periphery. If you want to do the musical performances and the jokes from the studio crew. And here's Kevin Hart giving a standup routine, put them before the event or after the event instead of in the middle. Actually have the event start on time, make it so your fans know if I turn on the TV at this time, within 10, 15 minutes, I'm going to get to watch my favorite players play basketball. Basketball. Streamline it. And the. And again, the beauty of the tournament style is it helps breed competition. The lazier teams will lose in the first round and we'll get the two more competitive teams of all stars playing in the, in the final. And again, the short, the shortened games, get rid of some of the cheaper baskets. You want to bring basketball back to the forefront and put the onus on the players to entertain us. Now, will it ever be a monumental basketball event again? Probably not. But then again, the All Star game is trash in pretty much every sports league and it's not really a fixable problem. I just am saying that I'd rather go down with basketball than go down with gimmicks. And I'd put the onus on the players in that regard. Second biggest takeaway, my thoughts on Mac McClung and the dunk contest. This is probably one of the biggest things that I disagree with the masses about. Like, the masses are obsessed with this idea. Like, we got to convince stars to participate in the dunk contest. And I think even if the NBA could convince John Morant and Anthony Edwards and Zion Williamson and someone like Donovan Mitchell or whoever it is to do the dunk contest, it would have some intrigue because of the stars. But the actual dunk contest itself would be lacking because game dunking and contest dunking are two entirely different sports, in my opinion. And like, there, there are certain, there are certain players in the NBA that are good at contest dunking, but they tend to not be superstars and there's just not enough of them. Professional dunking is like an entirely separate sport. It has a massive following. There are dozens of excellent professional dunkers all over the world. I've seen three of them come through Arizona over the years. Two of them, I've seen them do practice sessions before and like they just dunk over and over and over and over again. They're constantly trying new dunks they'll miss a hundred times before they actually master a dunk. It's like, and that's the thing too. It's like 25 vertical leap and like 75% of it is like intricacies of coordination and timing and creativity and all these different things. It's a, it's a different sport. And it's basically impossible to find four NBA all star level players that can reach that level of art in professional dunking. There are a Handful of players in the NBA that have that gift, right? Like, I thought Stefan Castle last night had a little bit of that flair. On Saturday night had a little bit of that flair when he had that East Bay where he put it through his legs off of the ball coming through the net. Like, that was a really, really impressive dunk. We even had a few years back, we had the Zach Levine and Aaron Gordon showdown, right? But that was kind of a flash in the pan kind of thing. It was just kind of a confluence of events where two of the very best contest style dunkers in the NBA happened to kind of meet in that situation. Like, that's not a thing that's going to organically happen very often, right? And even like, and even those guys were like, we don't want to do this anymore, right? Mac McClung is an NBA player. I saw a lot of people talking about how he's not an NBA player, he's a fringe NBA player, but he is an NBA player. He's played in five games for four different teams. I'm of the opinion that once you put the jersey on and you step on the floor, you're an NBA player. That's sacred to me. If you've accomplished that, no one can ever take that away from you. I think that that matters. But his main, his main talent, the thing that he's best at compared to most people in the world is he is a professional contest dunker type of athlete. And he's one of the very best in the world at it. And he's kept the event afloat in recent years because people are amazed by his creativity in his athleticism. I would actually just lean into that concept instead of trying to get NBA superstars to participate. Going back to that comment I saw earlier, in the same way that the NBA All Star game should just be the best basketball players in the world playing basketball, let's make the NBA dunk contest the best contest dunkers in the world. Competing in a dunk contest. Get Mac McClung in there, get seven more of the greatest contest dunkers in the world and hold a contest absolutely loaded with the wildest and craziest dunks. With real NBA all stars standing all around the sidelines celebrating and celebrate that sport, which is a different sport that probably should be showcased as the. As a completely separate sport with these different athletes. I think it has way more potential to be like a must see event every year. If you have all the best contest hunkers in the world. Instead of four NBA superstars that don't really have the time to practice anything other than a windmill or a360 or a east Bay through the legs, wherever you want to call it. Like, I think, I think, like, that's the thing. You go back, go back and look at the stars old dunks. Like, at the time, we didn't even know what contest dunkers looked like. And, you know, Kobe go through his legs or Michael Jordan would jump from the free throw line, and it was this beautiful, iconic thing. But now we've just seen too much. We've seen too much of the top end of, of real dunking talent. And I think that that would be the direction I'd go if I was the NBA. I'd be like, hey, we're doing a. We're. We're having all the best contest dunkers in the world on Saturday night. Come play. Like, I think that, I think that makes the most sense. And I, I mean, Mac McClung and the success he's had there, to me, is a perfect example of that. Number 3 thoughts on LeBron showing up late and then not playing. Here's my take on what LeBron was thinking. The Lakers just got Luka Doncic, and they haven't had any opportunity to really practice and implement him into their system. They have a makeup game from the fires this Wednesday against the Charlotte Hornets. They're the only team that plays on Wednesday. Everyone else is waiting till Thursday. I bet they're practicing today, and if they're not, they're certainly practicing Tuesday. So LeBron, his only opportunity to take a break with his family was that stretch right before the All Star Game from Thursday through, like, Saturday night. Right. I don't blame him at all for, at 40 years old, trying to maximize that time, especially since we're probably going to see a more engaged version of LeBron than we've seen since 2020 once we get to the other side of this break. So I, it made sense to me that if he was going to try to take a rest, he would do it Thursday, Friday, Saturday there, right after the Jazz game. And that was going to imply that he would be traveling back into, into the Bay Area on Sunday before the game. Right. As for not playing in the game, I think he was kind of protesting the format. I think he looked at it and he thought, why the hell, when I'm so damn old, am I going to go out and play in an exhibition game against Zach, Edie and Dalton Connect? I, I don't blame him for that at all either. I, I personally didn't agree with that idea from the league. Now, here's the thing. If you want to criticize LeBron for getting stars to stop participating in the dunk contest over the years, I think that's fair criticism. He was kind of the first guy now, I mean, I, I think he's maybe started that trend, but you could argue it would have inevitably happened. Right? But as far as far as the game goes, this isn't even the first year he waited till Sunday to show up. It isn't even the first year he sat out part of the game. Like, there was a year recently where he barely played at all. So to me, this is like kind of a LeBron Rorschach test. Like, if you don't like LeBron, you're going to cling to this, you're going to make him the villain, and he's going to be the sole reason no one cares about the All Star Game. I'm sure we'll see a clip of Rob Parker or somebody like that later today just blaming LeBron for the death of the All Star Game. But, like, if you don't dislike LeBron for whatever reason, I bet you just don't care. And I'm right there with you guys. I just don't care that LeBron showed up late and didn't really want to play in that. That specific format.
