TORONTO — This was so botched, we had to laugh. The 2016 NBA All-Star Game wasn’t that different from year’s past; except, both conferences beat the previous high (163) for points scored in a game by at least double digits after the West won walking away Sunday night, 196-173. The annual exhibition has turned into even more of a farce these days, with a never-ending cycle of wide-open triples and increasingly haphazard alley-oops that — when combined with a defense-less vacuum of the exhibition — in no way resembles the game of basketball. Despite all this, there was one amazing moment Sunday night, and it came with under 5 seconds remaining. There was only one problem: The primary TNT camera missed it and anyone watching at home missed it as well.
Here’s how it happened.
With 1:06 remaining, Kobe was subbed out of the game by Gregg Popovich and the rest of the team made sure the crowd commemorated the man of the hour.
Then, with under 10 seconds remaining, the TNT camera was trained on a laughing Kobe Bryant as Steph Curry dribbled with the ball a few steps inside the half-court line.
The camera operator obviously thought Steph would dribble out the clock to end the game — and Curry might have in a regular season game. But this is the All-Star Game and they must not have been familiar with the Baby-Faced Assassin, or his All-Star oeuvre?
Regardless of the reason, what the TV-watching populace saw was the ball, mid-trajectory sailing through the nylon, but no valuable context like where it was shot from. Thankfully, the multiple cameras on display as part of the TNT Overtime packaging, provided pivotal angles of Steph’s high-arching midcoast shot sailing true.
Steph Curry’s halfcourt 3 pointer to end the All Star Game via the @NBA pic.twitter.com/h6ZxksokCM
— The Cauldron (@TheCauldron) February 15, 2016
See you next year, unless we don’t.
