A tie, Navy football coach Eddie Erdelatz once said, is like kissing your sister. It’s a manly thing to say, and also an American thing to say. Americans love two things above all: winning, and hating people who encourage sharing. So imagine our surprise when we learned that rich megalomaniacs James Dolan and Mikhail Prokohorov put their basketball differences aside and agreed to share the 2015 NBA All-Star Game. We’re sorry, we thought this was Brooklyn, where we go hard?
Know what isn’t hard? Sharing. Especially sharing with your alleged hated rivals. We’ll excuse James Dolan on this one a little more than Mikhail Prokhorov, since Dolan hasn’t been the one leading a marketing charge all in your face about BROOKLYN and how it’s THE FUTURE and the Knicks are for your totally unhip grandad who think Jay-Z is some kind of weird young spelling of “jazz.”
The terms of the deal/peace treaty are that MSG gets the actual All-Star Game, and the weekend festivities like the Three-Point shooting contest and the dunk contest come to Barclays. “Big deal,” you’re thinking, “people love the dunk contest.” False. The only thing people like about the dunk contest now is trying to bully LeBron James into entering it and then complaining about the relative unknowns who are in it.
Second, New York is missing out on an opportunity to watch in bemusement at a classic rich guy fight, not seen since Dolan marshaled his forces against Bloomberg’s West Side Stadium idea. More important than that though, by agreeing to share the All-Star game, these two clowns are setting a dangerous precedent. The Mets and Yankees didn’t share the baseball All-Star Game, and look what that got us: an All-Star game in 2009 and 2013. Now what happens when the Islanders move to Brooklyn? Will the NHL expect them and the Rangers to share All-Star game hosting duties? Will a future MLB All-Star game be expected to be “shared”? That shouldn’t happen, but could, thanks to yet another squandering of the public trust.