It’s Home Run Derby night, which is always a fun event to watch – and we’d guess that Grant Paulsen, baseball lover that he is, would agree with Danny’s take that the Derby is the best All-Star event-related activity, as Darris and Ryan did.
“I think it has to be, because it's like one of those things where it's so weird because baseball gets in their way at every opportunity, but the Home Run Derby for whatever reason is so perfect because typically, they do have the stars actually participate in this,” Ryan said. “And then even if you don’t, like, Pete Alonso is a star and this is his thing, and Bobby Witt Jr. this year is a promising name, and Alec Bohm is actually a kind of a pretty popular rising name with a good team right now. It’s good to have stars in it, but it’s also so exciting to see 470-foot home runs – and I know you hate this, but Chris Berman made it for me.”
“I agree, yes, this is the best of the best. I'm pretty sure there's some cool events in hockey that I probably don't appreciate enough, and the three-point contest in the NBA is cool, but this is it,” Darris added.
Danny thinks the elimination tournament format wasn’t as good as the format they’re using this year where it’s every man for himself in the first round before an elimination tournament for the final four – although it’s a lot of pressure on the pitchers with the new format, which he explained.
But if the Derby is No. 1, what’s the SECOND best All-Star event?
Darris went with the three-point contest, and yeah, Danny’s in.
“You can see how seriously guys take it, you can see that it gets the star power, but you get a who’s who,” Danny said. “Back in the day, you got guys like Craig Hodges, who just rode the pine in Chicago because it wasn't as much of a point of emphasis in the game about post players and slashing guards that could do what Jordan did, but guys like him and Danny Ainge weren’t stars. Now, the stars do it. And that’s the badge of honor to be up there with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and company. That's what makes it so damn fun.”
He agrees with Ryan there on the star power element…which is something the dunk contest has lost.
“It used to be for the dunk contest, you had some stars, you had former stars judging it, and it was like this lovefest, and it was so exciting and so much damn fun – but that's been gone for a while,” Danny said. “Especially now, you get these videos on social media of dunk league type stuff, where these amateurs that would’ve been on like the And 1 Mixtape Tour, are doing frankly better dunks than you see these NBA guys do. They're not as good of players, I’m not alluding to that, but there’s one dude named Jordan Kilgannon who jumps so unbelievably high and does more trick stuff than anybody in the NBA in terms of dunks, because that's what he does. So they're out there doing better stuff, but there's nobody out there like making better threes than Steph Curry. That’s not the same thing, so give me the three-point contest of the two seed.”