Within the past few weeks, two of the major-league sports in the United States had their respective all-star tournaments, with each deciding to change it up from their typical style. The NHL moved away from the normal format in favor of the Four Nations Face-Off, a round-robin style tournament featuring players from the United States, Canada, Sweden and Finland; the NBA, on the other hand, featured three teams curated by Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, in addition to a rising stars team coached by Candace Parker.
The Four Nations Face-Off was nothing short of engaging. Every NHL team, with the exception of my beloved Washington Capitals, sent at least one player to the tournament. This drew in watchers, as people not only wanted to see their nation’s team succeed, but they also wanted to watch their favorite players do well. Finland and Sweden performed well, but the true stars of the Face-Off were the United States and Canada. Canada was expected to do well, as the hockey capital of the world, leaving the U.S. as more of an underdog team. This isn’t the first time the U.S. has excelled in hockey this year, as they won the World Juniors tournament led by Capitals prospect Ryan Leonard. Ultimately, Canada prevailed over the U.S. in their second meeting for the championship game, giving Penguins legend Sidney Crosby a well-deserved medal, in addition to one for Bruins captain Brad Marchand.
Even if the United States faced a loss, the Four Nations Face-Off was still an absolute highlight reel for American hockey. Both Brady and Matthew Tkachuk fought people within the first nine seconds of the U.S.’ first meeting with Canada, and the Columbus Blue Jackets’ Zach Werenski had the most points out of any player in the tournament. In the future, maybe the NHL will expand to more teams; I would love to see Alex Ovechkin play in the tournament, potentially on a team for the other European countries that don’t have enough players to form a full team like the ones from this tournament had.
On the other side of the road lies the NBA All-Star Game and All-Star Weekend overall. The celebrity game was fairly entertaining, featuring New England legend Noah Kahan. Entertainment was brought in the skills challenge, notably in the disqualification of Team Spurs due to shady plays by their representatives, and it was nice to see Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley win it for Cleveland. The three-point contest had a major upset in the form of Damien Lillard’s first-round exit, but I was satisfied to see Tyler Herro take home the trophy. Finally, Mac McClung achieved the first ever three-peat in the slam dunk contest, doing insane feats such as dunking over a car while only being 6’ 2”. McClung is arguably the only reason people bother watching the dunk contest anymore, and for what it was, the first two days of All-Star Weekend were entertaining. It only crashed from there.
While the involvement of legends like Chuck and Shaq was fun to see, the NBA made a critical mistake in their formatting of the All-Star game itself this year. Instead of doing East versus West or U.S. versus World, the presence of four teams caused a scoring cap for the mini-games played. They weren’t able to have full basketball games, while the NHL did full games for the entire Four Nations Face-Off. The players seemed fairly unmotivated, and while the All-Star Game is typically a display of shooting and ball-handling skills, this simply wasn’t that. Hopefully next year, they return to a two-team format that features a full game.
Overall, the success of the Four Nations Face-Off and failure of the NBA All-Star Game is representative of each league. Hockey is on the rise as basketball continues to fall, aided by the decisions made by each major league playing across the US and Canada. It’s more fun to watch when you can tell the players are enjoying themselves; the NBA needs to take a lesson from the NHL on how to increase both player and fan enjoyment in their out-of-season games.
