NBA All-Star Saturday is a spectacle, the annual convention of all things NBA. Gone are the days of Magic vs. Jordan and Bird, Tom Chambers going for 34 in the ’87 All Star game (look closely, they actually double teamed Kareem. Defense was allowed).

The All-Star game is not going anywhere fast. The longer it goes on, the more gimmicks are inserted. Sunday’s contest will be a series of three games, the last of which tips off at 10 p.m. ET.

Yes there is no single All Star game anymore anyhow.

The rosters are divided into four teams with the final two teams facing off, yes again at 10:00 pm ET.

The dunk contest furthers the spectacle with the yearly call up of Max McClung. McClung who has played all of five minutes this season for the Magic won his third-straight Slam Dunk contest in part by jumping over a Kia Saturday night.

McClung, you can’t not like him, he brings the energy and the dunks, but he’s not even an NBA player. Of course, it’s not the first time a car was brought onto the court for the dunk contest but still, the shark has been jumped.

How to fix the NBA All-Star game? Get back to the basics.

Late Wednesday ESPN reported that the Miami Heat have traded Jimmy Butler to the Golden State Warriors, for Kyle Anderson, Andrew Wiggins and a protected 2026 first-round pick.

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Butler became a disgruntled superstar last year when the Heat declined to sign him to a max longterm extension. Butler then was suspended multiple times this season by the Heat for “conduct detrimental to the team”

Butler as part of the deal, agreed to a new two-year contract extension with the Warriors.

One tidbit from the ESPN report is that Kerr repeatedly told the media in recent weeks and days that he did not want the Warriors “to do anything crazy”.

“Don’t do anything crazy,” Kerr said. “We are not in that position. I think it is important for every organization to know where they are and understand the circumstances and then you see the possibilities. Draymond, Steph and I have talked about this privately; we have talked about this with [Warriors general manager] Mike [Dunleavy Jr.]. There is a responsibility to the organization to do the right thing and to not beg for some crazy trade that is going to put the next 10 years in jeopardy.”

While giving up Anderson and Wiggins two aging veterans and this year’s first round pick is not putting the team in jeopardy for the next ten years, adding Butler is in fact a crazy trade.  Maybe we’re reading too much into it, but that’s the entire point of NBA trade season.

The Warriors are currently the 11th placed team in a packed Western Conference, but are just five games back from the fourth-seed in the West. Steph Curry is 36. The Warriors front office wants to give it one more go it appears before a rebuild happens. That one more go involves Jimmy Butler, after an attempted trade for Kevin Durant with Phoenix fizzled out after Durant allegedly asserted he did not want to return to the Warriors.

It became apparent in the final weeks of Butler’s tenure in Miami that the relationship between player and coach had deteriorated. It looked pretty bad. Of course Butler was forcing his way out of Miami. Miami coach Erik Spoelstra, to his credit,  simply said “We work in a league of complexity” when describing the chaos that ensued as Butler was suspended and put away from the team.

“We’re in an unusual place right now, but really, it’s all complex, and we fully plan on operating within this complexity.”

Complexity in this case appears to be a substitute for dysfunction.

Butler’s days with Miami were numbered.

Warriors Steve Kerr coach and Spoelstra are close friends, both USA basketball coaches.

Kerr too knows how to coach in complexity.

We’ll see if the Warriors with Butler can make a run at it.

The NBA All-Star should be abolished. There’s no going back.

The best All-Star game was in 1992. Sure you had Magic making his comeback, but you also had Jordan and Bird and Patrick Ewing, and basically the entire Dream Team who would go on to win the Olympic Gold medal in Barcelona later that year. It truly was the beginning of the NBA Golden Age.

They played some defense, because to not to play defense was boring, you’re only playing half the game. You wouldn’t go bowling and play without pins, you’d be playing half the game.  They played basketball.

But today, it has become totally unacceptable to play defense. It’s as though to play defense would indicate that you didn’t have as much to lose, for risk of injury. Of course no one in 1992 or any other All Star game has ever gotten seriously injured.

A quick google search will show the only injury of any notoriety happened 20 years later, when Dwayne Wade broke Kobe Bryant’s nose in what would be the first and only flagrant foul in NBA history.

The NBA All-Star is not going anywhere, but the easiest solution would be to do away with any gimmicks and simply let guys play basketball.

There’s no doubt just as the All-Stars of yesterday knew how to play, have fun and put on a show for the fans without getting injured, the current generation of All-Stars would have no problem doing the same.

Front Page Image:  NBA All-Star Game 2010 at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX. Licensed under a creative commons share-alike. Use freely but give attribution to Rondo Estrello, Dallas Art Nerd, and link to www.rondostar.com