All Star and Stripes

As a British sports fan its easy to knock the NBA All-Star Game. The notion that any self-respecting professional sports league can, midway through it's season just stop what its doing and hold a mini-exhibition is frankly alien to us. A week ago you could have been watching two of these guys snarling at each other as their paths crossed on court and they each sort to come out on top; now a few days later here they are high-fiving after a successful alley-oop showboating combination. It is to a degree the sporting equivalent of the cast of Eastenders doing one of those Comic Relief song and dance routines where they re-enact the big dance scene from Fame.

But, this is of course sport as entertainment, 'sportainment' if you will and its what the Americans do best. Sure we have our imitators on this side of the Atlantic with Masters' Tennis and Masters' Football, but the key is in the pre-fix. On these shores we only let the athletes let their hair down when they've long since retired from the top-level of their sport. Whilst even in their twilight these players can entertain, and I'm thinking primarily of the great tennis showman Mansour Bahrami, what spectators of these events are essentially buying into is 'sportainment' fuelled by nostalgia.

In America, they deal with the hear and now and they excel at 'sportainment'. Hence the success of WWE Wrestling, Arena Football, Demolition Derbys, and the Harlem Globetrotters. What the All-Star Game, and indeed all American 'sportainment' has over British immitations is that they are all contested by the stars of now, showcasing what they are capable of at the top of their game. The Dunk Contest, the Three-Point Contest et al may be effectively sideshows, but they are still populated by the current game's top players. And those players don't stop at just playing the game.

Sunday's main game was preceded by a lengthy song and dance routine, which culminated in Shaquille O'Neil centre of a white mask clad breakdance troupe. No matter how cynical you may be about American sport, surely you cannot deny that if the country's top footballers met in a North vs South fixture, opened by Peter Crouch robot-ing it up, mimicked by a surrounding dance-troupe of hand-picked cheerleaders, you would not be glued to your television. Thought not.