Kobe Bryant Was Spot On With His Harsh Criticism Of NBA All-Star Game

Late NBA legend Kobe Bryant did wonders in the All-Star game over the years, but his perspective emphasized a major issue. Kobe spoke about this in 2019 and unfortunately, the NBA didn’t do much to handle the problem.

The Black Mamba once spoke about the lack of competition and fans couldn’t agree more. Kobe understood fans really well. He was a fan of strong competition as well.

“I think the All-Star game in general needs a little revamping because it used to be competitive,” Kobe said during his appearance on the “Knuckleheads” podcast with Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles in 2019. “Fans want to see the best pick-up game in the world. That’s what it is. They don’t want to see you running up and down doing all this crazy stuff, dunking, and all that. Want to see what happens when you put the best collection of basketball players on the planet. They play and go head up against each other. I mean, you guys play harder at a pickup game at UCLA, and it ain’t billion of people watching.”

Kobe was right…

“Guys play harder in a pickup game at UCLA”

(h/t @LakerFiles) pic.twitter.com/zb1m0GObAi

— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) February 19, 2024

Kobe won almost every All-Star Game he played with CP

Kobe was a dominant force in the NBA back in the days. His presence in the All-Star Game was a game-changer. Kobe was winning games with minimum effort and fans enjoyed every bit of it.

“I always loved competing in them, I didn’t lose in many of them. Me and CP used to talk about it all the time. I don’t think that when me and CP played together in the All-Star game, I don’t think we ever lost a game. We used to look at each other, okay let’s go. Yeah, fourth quarter, let’s go get ’em.”

When it comes to the most recent All-Star Game, we can easily say that the East got the best of it. Eastern Conference players celebrated a 211-186 win over their opponents. Was this competitive enough for most NBA fans?