Cup of Cavs: NBA news and links for Friday, Feb. 13

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, February 17th. The Cleveland Cavaliers are 34-21 and don’t play again until Thursday.

I hope you enjoyed the All-Star break. From here on out, the playoffs are going to be on everyone’s mind. But before we do that, let’s take a moment to discuss the weekend we just had.

All-Star Recap

There has been a lot of discourse about All-Star Weekend this year. To be honest, there’s a lot of discourse about everything nowadays. Since there are no games on right now, I figured I’d add my two cents to the pile.

The problem is, I didn’t get to watch All-Star weekend this year.

I understand why the NBA decided to start the events early to avoid overlapping with the Winter Olympics. But, did you really expect me to catch a 5 pm start on Valentine’s Day? No chance.

I knew I wasn’t going to catch Friday’s events, which actually started during prime time at 8 pm Eastern — but I foolishly made plans for Sunday evening as I didn’t realize the big game would be over by 7:30. That’s partly my fault, but mainly, I blame the NBA for poor scheduling.

My problems aside, I was pleased to know that the All-Star Game was actually fun this season. At least, for a few moments.

The flashes of entertainment we received this weekend all came from one single fix: effort. No format change or fancy tournament will matter if the players don’t care. This has been the only important factor for the entire history of the event.

Long story short, we’ve all spent too much time problem-solving something that is out of our control. Either the players care, or they don’t. The events are only as fun as the players make them. This year, they delivered. Next year? We’ll have to wait and see.