When asked if he and the “old heads” team, which also features LeBron James, would play hard in this year’s NBA All-Star Game, which is once again debuting a new format, Durant called out Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic for their efforts in recent All-Star games. He wondered why they don’t face the same criticism his generation of Americans do.
“They don’t care about the game at all. These dudes be laying on the floor, they shoot from halfcourt, but you’ve got to worry about the ‘old heads’ playing hard,” Durant told reporters in Houston on Wednesday, Feb. 11. “I can read between the lines.”
How about reading the room, first?
However accurate Durant’s whataboutism concerning his European counterparts may well be, one of the NBA’s greatest scorers is completely missing the point. They learned it from somewhere. But Durant’s not alone here, and it’s threatening the very product that made all these NBA players, executives and owners so rich over the years.
It’s long overdue for the NBA to show it still really cares – about the fans, about the quality of its regular season, about the integrity of the entire enterprise. The NBA’s check engine light is flashing as the league commences its annual All-Star break, and those with any kind of power should be looking under the hood. The paint job from that lucrative new media rights deal can only hide the issues for so long.
But the NBA All-Star Game returns to Los Angeles in 2026 not as a celebration of basketball, but instead as a convention for complaining about the state of the league. Just consider the potential questions and controversies NBA Commissioner Adam Silver could have to address when he speaks to reporters, any one of which is a big problem on its own.
- Tanking has gotten so egregious this season, and started so early in the schedule, that Silver had to fine the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers this week. There are at least eight NBA teams who won’t be actively trying to win games over the next two months. Even the players are beginning to question what’s happening publicly, with Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green noting on his podcast, ”It’s more blatant than it’s ever been. It’s ridiculous and it’s killing the product.”
- A current NBA player (Terry Rozier) was indicted by the federal government for allegedly faking an injury and removing himself from an NBA game for gambling purposes and a current head coach and Hall of Fame player (Chauncey Billups) was indicted for his alleged involvement in illegal poker games with Mafia ties.
- The NBA still hasn’t completed its investigation into the September 2025 report from Pablo Torre that the Los Angeles Clippers circumvented the salary cap by facilitating a $28 million ‘no-show endorsement contract’ for Kawhi Leonard under the table when it signed him in 2019.
This doesn’t even take into account that one NBA owner could be supplying the Russian Army with wireless communications during its war against Ukraine, or that several people with NBA connections were mentioned in the Epstein files, or that so many of the league’s stars are out injured right now, or that one of those stars recently became a minority investor in a major predictions market, or that the analytics revolution in the NBA has begat a generation of league executives beholden to numbers instead of fans.
But that all means what Silver says is far more important this weekend than whatever takes place on the basketball court.
It’s a good thing the players don’t care about the All-Star Game anyways.
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