In honor of our national pastime taking a break over these three days to have their All-Star game, I thought I’d give you my top five “All-Star” activities for all sports.  The criteria, looking at all professional sports “all-star” breaks, I am listing my top 5 activities that take place surrounding these events.  Please note, I think that NFL needs to get rid of their “Pro Bowl.”  Nobody cares the week after the Super Bowl.

Without further ado, the list.

Honorable Mentions: NHL Skills Competition and the  NBA Rookie/Sophomore Game. Haven’t even seen one yet, but I think I’d also enjoy an MLS All-Star Game.

Five: The NBA H-O-R-S-E competition. Nothing like taking a backyard favorite and having some of the guys in the NBA compete.

Four: The NBA All-Star Game. It’s crazy-go-nuts, no defense, but for whatever reason, I still watch it.  The only way I think it will become an actual game is if they did something crazy like made it count for home-court advantage for the winner conference for the Championship series… oh wait, that’s bee done by the MLB.  Okay, here’s my suggestion, the conference that wins, the teams in that conference that are in the NBA draft lottery get an extra ball in the drawing?

Three: NHL All-Star Game.  I’m not a huge NHL Guy, I like the play-offs, but I have enjoyed watching bits of the All-Star game because of the increased scoring.  It’s fun to see a game end 12-10.  I think, similar to the NBA, the game is so much different than the actual season that a purest wouldn’t like it, but for an occasional fan, it is fun to see.

Two: The Three Point Contest in NBA. I love the one-minute format with five racks of five balls each and the “money ball” as the last one on each rack.  This is one competition that can always be repeated because it doesn’t require creativity and it happens so quickly… whereas the Dunk Contest needs to go away for a good number of years.

One: The Baseball All-Star Game.  All other All-Star games are played for fun.  Not that I’m a huge fan of the home-field advantage in the world-series going to the winner, but I do like that the All-Star game in baseball actually seems to be played competitively.  Take basketball for instance, if LeBron is on a break, nobody makes any effort to defend… I’m thankful that Cliff Lee didn’t underhand a pitch to Albert Pujols in tonight’s game.

Anyone have something I am missing?

Grace,
Brian