Nick Wright
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Fox Sports’ Nick Wright believes that the NBA All-Star Game can be improved if the league were to split the teams by race.
For the better part of a decade, NBA fans have repeatedly complained about the annual All-Star Game lacking real effort from the players. As a result, the game pitting the very best players in the world against one another — which, on paper, should make for a thrilling event — has left much to be desired in the form of entertainment. The league has tried to remedy this by experimenting with various different formats, but nothing has really stuck.
On Sunday, the All-Star game will be made up of two teams of American stars and one team of international stars. The teams will compete in a round-robin tournament, and the top two teams will compete in a championship game.
During an appearance on Bill Simmons’s podcast, Wright began explaining his idea by first telling Simmons that it’ll only work if Charlotte Hornets rookie Kon Knueppel blossoms into a star.
“And we just have to say, ‘You know what? PC headlines be damned!'” Wright continued, referring to political correctness.
At that moment, Simmons knew exactly where Wright was going and began to laugh.
“White guys versus Black guys,” Wright said. “Luka, Joker, Flagg, Reaves, Knueppel, against Wemby, whomever. I’m telling you right now, guys would play f*cking hard! There would be a real edge to the game!”
Simmons conceded that such a format “would get a lot of talking points going that week.”
With the NBA being predominantly Black, its top players over the last few generations have largely been Black as well. Due to the emergence of Eastern European stars, as well as the arrival of White American stars like Dallas Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg, Wright argued that the game would be competitive.
“In the meantime,” Wright continued, “I don’t know what the hell you do.”
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