By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Lebron James doesn’t really look forward to this season’s All-Star Game.
“I have zero energy and zero excitement about an All-Star Game this year,” James said, a bit after notching a triple-double in the Los Angeles Lakers‘ win over the Denver Nuggets. “I don’t even understand why we’re having an All-Star game.”
“It’s the agreement that the players’ association and the league came about… It’s out of my hands. I’ll be there if I’m selected. But I’ll be there physically, but not mentally,” Lebron added. He’s currently leading the race in the Western Conference with 2,288,676 votes in the NBA All-Star voting.
The NBA is planning to have the 2021 All-Star Game in March. The alternative to that would be an opportunity for James to have a midseason break following an unusually short offseason after the COVID-19 crisis postponed the 2019-2020 finale.
“Short offseason for myself and my teammates, 71 days,” James said. “And then coming into this season, we were told that we were not having an All-Star Game, so we’d have a nice little break. Five days [in March] from the 5th through the 10th, an opportunity for me to kind of recalibrate for the second half of the season. My teammates as well. Some of the guys in the league.”
“And then they throw an All-Star Game on us like this and just breaks that all the way up. So, um, pretty much kind of a slap in the face,” James added.
Lebron isn’t the only NBA player who is against an All-Star game this season. Sacramento Kings guard De’Aaron Fox said that he thinks it’s “stupid” to for the NBA to hold an All-Star game amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The All-Star game is scheduled to take place in Atlanta, an area with eased coronavirus restrictions. James also takes this into consideration.
“We’re also still dealing with a pandemic,” Lebron said. “We’re still dealing with everything that’s been going on, and we’re going to bring the whole league into one city that’s open? Obviously, the pandemic has absolutely nothing to do with it at this point when it comes to that weekend.”