February 14 kicked off the 75th annual NBA All Star Weekend, a weekend where the top stars in the National Basketball Association (NBA) compete over a plethora of games and contests spanning through Saturday and Sunday. This year’s event was hosted in San Francisco, California at the Chase Center, the home of the Golden State Warriors. This marks the first time the All Star game was held in the Bay Area since 2000.

The main event of the weekend happened on Sunday night when the All Star game was held. This year, instead of a classic East All Stars vs. West All Stars game, they decided to split it up into a tournament between United States born players on team USA and players from the rest of the world on team World. Team USA consisted of players like Anthony Edwards, LeBron James, and Steph Curry, whereas team World consisted of players like Luka Doncic, Victor Wembanyama, and Shai Gilgeous Alexander. 

This year’s All Star game was deemed a massive success ratings-wise due to a peak viewer count of 9.8 million. This comes after fans all over the world were complaining about how the All Star Game had gotten boring or that players simply didn’t care anymore. “Honestly, it got to the point where I didn’t really want to watch it anymore,” says Ethan Patterson, member of the Skyline High School Men’s Basketball team. “But this year, it was great; I really think it was seeing [Wembanyama] play.” 

The All Star game wasn’t the only good thing to come out of the weekend: on Saturday, the annual 3-Point Contest was held with nothing less than a star-powered lineup, containing Damian Lillard, Devin Booker, Kon Knueppel, Tyrese Maxey, Donovan Mitchell, Jamal Murray, Bobby Portis, and Norman Powell. The biggest headline to come out of this contest was the participation of Portland’s Damian Lillard, who had been previously sidelined with an ACL tear he suffered in last year’s playoffs. Even though he had been out with injury since then, he decided to participate in the contest, making him the first player to do so in NBA history. Not only is that impressive on its own, but Lillard ended up winning the contest with a score of 29 points, giving him his third career win. 

Now, even though these were both great events to happen, there was a low point of the evening: the Dunk Contest. The Dunk Contest has had its issues over the recent years, mainly with player participation. Back in the 1980s, the Dunk Contest would have the best players in the world competing at a time, like in 1988 which featured a battle between Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins. Nowadays, it’s a little less like that. There are a lot of factors going into the decision of stars not wanting to participate; some say fear of injury, some say bad judging, and some say they don’t want to do it solely based on the fact that all the dunks that could score well have been done, resulting in a lower score. “My favorite contest of all time was 2016 with Aaron Gordon and Zach Lavine,” says Patterson, “but I definitely think Zion [Williamson] and Ja [Morant] should be in it next year.” The contest this year featured a lineup that consisted of Jaxson Hayes, Carter Bryant, Jase Richardson, and the eventual winner Keshad Johnson. “I thought the dunk contest was a little disappointing,” says another member of the Skyline Men’s Basketball team, Jacob Adair. “I didn’t think it had as much competition as it could’ve, especially compared to the 3-Point Contest and the All Star game itself.” Rookie Keshad Johnson was the winner of the contest; he sealed the deal with an impressive through-the-legs reverse in one try. 

How can they make the contest better? The question that seems to be on the mind of every NBA fan, it seems everything’s been done and players just don’t want to compete anymore. Adair gave his thoughts on the matter: “I think Adam Silver as the commissioner should take the role and try to improve it. I think they can improve it by maybe having incentives like money for winning it; I think that could help them.”