“It was just a glorified lay-up line”

The Celtics famous person duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown shone within the NBA All-Celebrity Recreation in Salt Pond Town on Sunday night time.

Tatum earned MVP honors then losing a report 55 issues in Workforce Giannis’ 184-175 win, generation Brown led Workforce LeBron with 35 issues and 14 rebounds.

However even with an remarkable stat sequence in his 2nd All-Celebrity time out, Brown presented some candid and demanding ideas on Sunday’s collective defensive try (or insufficiency thereof).

Admittedly, contesting photographs, locking the paint and pressuring avid gamers up and indisposed the courtroom hasn’t ever in reality been some extent of consideration all the way through the NBA’s annual exhibition.

However Brown, taking part in with a masks for the primary month then struggling a facial split previous this hour, believes his forged play games was once helped by way of the insufficiency of defensive again at the courtroom at Vivint Enviornment.

“Everything is fun in games like this”, Brown told reporters after the game. “Real basketball is different. It was like a lay-up line. I don’t know how much notoriety we would want to get out of it. It was a glorified lay-up line. We have to figure out how to make the game a little bit more competitive. If the fans like it, that’s all that matters.

Brown wasn’t the only All-Star entrant less than happy with the actual product on the court Sunday. Nuggets coach Mike Malone – who served as the head coach of the LeBron team – didn’t hesitate when asked about the play offered by some of its members.

“It’s an honor to be here, and it’s an honor to be part of a great weekend with great players, but this is the worst basketball game ever played,” Malone said. “I don’t know if you can fix it. I give Joel Embiid and Kyrie Irving [credit], these two guys were in competition. They tried to defend themselves. No one was hurt, they put on a show for the fans, but it’s a tough game to live with, I’m not going to lie.

Of course, fans at these types of events probably won’t lament seeing the NBA’s top talent practicing shot after shot beyond the arc or loading the highlight reel with gravity-defying dunks. .

And with the players themselves also putting their collective games on cruise control to avoid overwork and injury during what is essentially a no-stakes scrimmage, it remains to be seen how the league makes the All-Star Game more competitive.

There were a few moments in Sunday’s contest where the competitive juices were flowing, headlined by the one-on-one battle between Tatum and Brown late in the third quarter.

The two Celtics stalwarts managed to slam into each other in a rare tilt. Brown fired two shots directly past Tatum, including a deep 3-ball, while Tatum stepped back three of his own in the dying seconds of the frame.

“It felt like another day at the office for us, didn’t it? I’ve been on the same team for six years now,” Tatum said of his battles with Brown. “We performed numerous one-on-one suits, scrums towards every alternative. We now have all the time introduced out the most efficient in everybody. So it was once a standard hour for us. Simply thousands and thousands of family gazing on probably the most largest levels. So I simply had a negligible amusing with it.