Former U.S. president done watching NBA All-Star Game: ‘It insults the game’

Another prominent voice is ripping the state of the NBA All-Star game, and this one was heard in the Oval Office.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama had some candid thoughts about the state of the game featuring the best basketball players in the world while appearing on “The Young Man and the Three” podcast this week.

“Y’all gotta have a little more pride in that All-Star Game,” Obama told hosts Tommy Alter and Haliburton, a two-time All-Star. “It’s not as if you all don’t play pickup during the summers. You know how to play in a way that, ‘alright, I’m not going to hurt anybody, I’m not going to take anybody out.’ But that All-Star Game, it’s broke, man.”

Haliburton tried to interject several times, but the 44th president spoke like he’s used to being the most important guy in the room and just kept going.

“It insults the game,” Obama continued. “This is your business. This is your product. You don’t want people thinking you’re all out there just half-assed.”

Obama agreed that having a prize on the line might helped, but countered that since NBA players, especially All-Stars, make so much money already that cash incentives probably won’t matter.

The Eastern Conference beat the Western Conference 211-186 in the highest-scoring All-Star game in history in 2024. The East made 42 3-pointers to break the mark of 35 set by Team LeBron in 2019 and attempted 97 of them.

And the sides combined for 193 points in the first half to break the any-half record of 191 set last year, and the East tied an any-half record by scoring 104 by intermission.

Several longtime NBA observers ripped the effort in the game afterward using words like “dreadful” and “embarrassing.”

Haliburton told Obama there was a player meeting before the game in which NBA legend Larry Bird spoke to the players imploring them to put more effort in.

Haliburton, one of the league’s newer stars, also said he was “reading the room” when it came to the effort he was putting in.

The league has experimented with the game in recent years, selecting teams via player drafts and tweaking rules like adding the clockless Elam ending seen in The Basketball Tournament every summer.

But with an 82-game season littered with load management and the apparent prevailing opinion among players that the game doesn’t matter and isn’t worth risking injury, it might be hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

“Take it more seriously,” Obama said. “Y’all need to do something, because I ain’t watching that thing no more.”

The 2025 NBA All-Star Game will be hosted by the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco. The safe money may be on both teams breaking 200 points.