Joining the millions of fans worldwide, Joel Embiid took to X to express his thoughts on NBA All-Star Saturday. Speaking specifically on the dunk contest, Embiid threw some shade at the accuracy of the scoring and suggested that the judges were being a little too generous with their scores on unimpressive dunks.
“I’m a professional hater but I’m not hating when I say I could win the dunk contest with these scores but not sure the knees would allow it lmao,” wrote Embiid.
Joel has been plagued by knee injuries for his entire career and is probably the last person who should risk their body to participate in something like this. Even during games, he usually doesn’t go flashy with his dunks to avoid any unnecessary strain on his body. Even so, he somehow sees himself winning the event in its current form due to the quality of the slam dunks we’ve seen lately.
This year, while some great slams were made, it was seemingly another dud as fans and critics expressed their displeasure across the internet. Mac McClung was crowned as the winner for the second straight year and he had some impressive moments but, the conversation online was more about the event itself and how far it has fallen from its glory days.
There was a time when All-Star weekend was dominated by the dunk contest and fans would wait all day to watch stars like Michael Jordan, Dr. J, Vince Carter, and even Blake Griffin perform the most exciting and entertaining moves possible. Today, the whole weekend is a shadow of its former self and it’s going to take some work for the NBA to set it back on the right course.
What’s Wrong With All-Star Weekend?
Fan reviews of the dunk contest were pretty rough. The fact that a G-Leaguer in Mac McClung came out to win his second straight is pretty embarrassing for the NBA especially considering the tradition associated with the event. Sadly, due to a lack of star participation and maybe a limitation in the creativity of dunks, the contest may never return to what it was. Unfortunately, that’s really just the start of the problems for All-Star weekend.
For the main event itself, many fans were happy to hear the league revert to the East Vs. West format of old but it remains to be seen if the stars will actually take it seriously. Anthony Edwards has already promised to shoot the game left-handed, so the signs are not looking good for a serious, tough-fought game. Plus, with a lot of older veterans vowing to take it easy and rest, we may not even see some of the fan favorites out there for long.
Needless to say, there are some major issues with the All-Star weekend, and while the NBA has taken steps to improve the fan experience it could still be better in a lot of ways. If the league can get the top stars to buy in and participate in Saturday’s contests, it will do a lot to drive fan interest everywhere.
Arguably the most important thing of all is breathing some life back into the dunk contest and until fans have a reason to get excited about it, there will always be people longing for how it used to be.
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