My radical proposal to save the NBA All Star Game

"The answer to all your questions is money."

Did you watch any of the NBA All-Star Game this weekend? I did. And, yes, it mostly sucked.

The one part that I found very watchable was when YouTube superstar Mr. Beast offered $100,000 to a college kid if he could make one three-pointer from the NBA logo before Damian Lillard, the winner of the previous two three-point contest, could make three of those same shots.

Watch:

Pretty cool, right? Like, genuinely exciting and fun!

Why? Because $100,000 meant something to that kid (whose name is Jaren Barajas). Here’s what he said about winning the money:

“This is going to mean the world to me, it’s going to help my family a lot and definitely my future. Hopefully it’ll help me pay for my education, which it will.”

There is a lesson here. And it’s a lesson anyone who follows me (or listens to Tony Kornheiser’s podcast) know: The answer to all of your questions is money.

Which brings me to my radical proposal to save the NBA All Star Game — and, really, all professional sports all star games: Raise the financial stakes. Bigly.

Know what the winning team got for their victory in Sunday’s All Star Game? $125,000 per person.

And here is the yearly salary of just a few members of that winning team:

• Steph Curry: $55.7 million

• James Harden: $33.65 million

• Jayson Tatum $34.85 million

• Damian Lillard: $48.79 million

While $125,000 is a WHOLE lot to me or you, it’s utterly meaningless to these guys. If you make $55 million a year, do you think you are busting your ass (and running the risk of getting hurt) for .2% of what you make annually?

OF COURSE NOT.

Which is why Sunday’s All-Star Game was garbage. None of the top players tried — or even close. And that’s been the story of the NBA mid-season showcase for, at least, the last decade.

My answer? Directly appeal to greed. (I didn’t say it was a solution that would make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside!)

Up the financial ante. Like, way up. Offer each member of the winning team $10 million. Each. Limit the roster to 10 people. So you are giving away $100 million. And make clear that there is no second place prize. You either win $10 million bucks or zilch.

Now, for someone who makes $55 million a year, $10 million still isn’t that much money. But, I have yet to meet a person — rich or not — who would sniff at $10 million for a night’s work. (Nota Bene: I have never met jeff Bezos or Elon Musk.)

Let’s be very clear: The NBA absolutely could do this.

The NBA is estimated to make $3 BILLION in profits every year. And those numbers just keep going up. Here’s a look at the NBA’s revenues (in billions) over time:

Here are the problems I see with my solution.

1. It’s unseemly. Paying millionaires millions to play a sport? Come on, man.

2. Organizations that make billions in profits don’t like to, uh, spend millions. They like MAKING money.

On problem one, I get it! But, the NBA is a business. The players are the talent in that business. If you want to get them to try super hard, you need to find ways to incentivize them. It’s the same logic a company used when it promises bonuses to their top 10 salespeople. It’s just at a a different financial scale because these guys make a ton of dough already.

On problem two, all companies have to invest in their best resources in order to a) retain them and b) ensure the business continues to grow.

While $100 million isn’t a small sum — you could probably get away with paying each winner $5 million, honestly — the NBA MINTS money. MINTS it. And the driver of that money machine is the players. Without them, there’s no NBA. So pay them more to ensure a watchable product at your once-a-year showcase of the sport.

(Sidebar: While we’re at it, pay the winner of the dunk contest and the three-point contest more too. Mac McClung has won the dunk contest three straight years — and earned a total of $325,000 for it. Come on!)

I love basketball. I love the NBA. But what I watched — briefly — on Sunday at the All Star Game was, well, unwatchable.

I am open to any and all other ideas of how to make it better. But something HAS to change. Because there’s no point in even having an all star game if it continues to suck as much as the one on Sunday did.

It’s time to think out of the box, people.