All-Star Weekend is little more than a gargantuan marketing event.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re blessed with three days of the NBA’s elite players, shooters, and dunkers. We get average-at-worst musical performances from semi-relevant artists, some cool art and engineering feats, flashy jerseys, and a much-needed break from the fast-moving, unforgiving NBA season. Many of our favourite NBA memories — Dwight Howard’s Superman dunk, Charles Barkley planting a wet kiss on Dick Bavetta’s face after narrowly beating him in a race, Arne Duncan dominating the celebrity game each year — are born at All-Star Weekend. It’s all fun and games, and that’s great. So long as you realize none of this stuff matters in the course of an NBA season, of course.
The selections don’t matter. The results don’t matter. Ultimately, All-Star Weekend is a money grab, despite the fact it’s sold to us as a reward for our fandom. (To be fair, it is a reward for our fandom. Kind of.)
On the surface, every All-Star Weekend is the same. There are eight events. There are special jerseys. There are lots of celebrities. The NBA commissioner will be there. There will be off-court events for fans and media.
All that changes, really, is the names. Oh, and the location.
All-Star Weekend is hosted by a different city every year. Last year, it was in New York City. The year prior, New Orleans. The year before that, Houston. All-Star Weekend’s been to every corner of the United States (sans Hawaii and Alaska, for obvious reasons), but it’s never been in Canada before this year. That’s a big deal. That’s a very big deal.
This will be only the fourth time Toronto has hosted an All-Star event for one of the Big Four sports in North America. (If you’re wondering, Toronto hosted the 1991 MLB All-Star Game, the 1968 NHL All-Star Game, and the 2000 NHL All-Star Game.) For a city still widely seen as a hockey haven, this is a huge opportunity for the city to showcase itself as something other than icy, white, and middle class.
We’ve all seen the terrible NBA TV Canada commercials, where celebrities and former players patronizingly refer to us as some unknown other.
Canada, eh?
It’s up there! Up there!
Are you ready, Canada? Are you ready, Canada?
It’s annoying, but it’s also a fairly accurate glance at how the country is viewed from the outside. We’re part of the family, it seems, but we’re not that kind of family. In many ways, we’re the uncle you reluctantly invite to Christmas solely because he’s your mom’s adopted brother.
Now, Toronto isn’t the greatest reflection of Canadian culture. We’re blessed to live in a city so wealthy, so diverse, and so big that its only real rivals in North America are Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Most of Canada isn’t as liberal or multicultural as Toronto is, either, and you’ll seldom find a Canadian from a smaller city or town that isn’t initially overwhelmed by the sheer scale and diversity of the city.
Still, Toronto is in a unique position. While it could certainly use All-Star Weekend to rep itself to the fullest by pushing its attractions and artistry, it shouldn’t. Much like the Raptors have attempted to do in recent years, the city should try to appeal to all Canadians. This event is bigger than us. Many Canadians who wouldn’t normally watch All-Star Weekend are going to tune in simply because the event is hosted in Toronto. To some extent, we owe it to the rest of Canada to represent not just us, but them. But how?
We’re going to see lots of Drake, but I also hope we see other Canadian talent. Justin Bieber, perhaps? The Weeknd? Celine Dion singing the national anthem, maybe? Nelly Furtado? Heck, how about some Rush or Neil Young? And not just because these acts are themselves Canadian, but because they are a large part of what makes us Canadian.
But it’s so much more than just the music and entertainment. The game of basketball has a deep history here, even if it’s taken more than 100 years to truly take root. Dr. James Naismith, a Canadian, invented basketball in 1891. The first ever NBA game was played between the New York Knickerbockers and the Toronto Huskies in 1946 at Maple Leaf Gardens. I hope the city pays homage to the basketball’s Canadian history. Yes, we owe it to Canada, but we also owe it to the game of basketball.
And hey, maybe you think I’m taking this too seriously. Maybe you believe the All-Star Game isn’t anywhere near the Olympics in terms of importance. You’d be right. But this is an opportunity to showcase our heritage, our ties to the game, and the extremely bright future of basketball in Canada. This is as much about the memes and entertainment as it is our cultural identity. Let’s show some pride in who we are. (I’m probably asking a lot, here, but I’d love for the city to show love to Francophones and the First Nations, too. But given Canada’s, shall we say, “complicated” history with honouring those two groups, I’m not getting my hopes up.)
It’s entirely possible Toronto hosts the NBA All-Star game again in our lifetimes, but this is an opportunity the city should not pass up. I’m already looking forward to showing my American media friends around the city and introducing them to some of the elements of Canadian culture. Because to many of them, we’re just that place “up there.”
And we’re so much more than that.
