Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Should Kick Visitors, Players And NBA All-Star Game Out Of Atlanta

The NBA All-Star Game won’t become a gigantic ATM machine this year, filled with millions of dollars for the league and for the host city.

Speaking of that host city, one word: COVID-19.

Just about everything surrounding the NBA holding its yearly nothing event on March 7 in Atlanta is crazy.

Even the mayor of this coronavirus-filled place said so Tuesday.

“Under normal circumstances, we would be extremely grateful for the opportunity to host the NBA All-Star game, but this is not a typical year,” Keisha Lance Bottoms said in a statement, likely thinking about Charlotte with every word, because Charlotte is an Atlanta wannabe.

When Charlotte hosted the NBA All-Star Game two seasons ago, the Charlotte Regional Visitor’s Authority bosses was reported by the Charlotte Observer as saying the total economic impact for the area was $100 million due to 150,000 visitors in town for the three-day weekend.

Atlanta would have blown past those numbers without the pandemic, but Bottoms couldn’t care less at the moment.

“I have shared my concerns related to public health and safety with the NBA and Atlanta Hawks,” Bottoms said in her statement. “We are in agreement that this is a made-for-TV event only, and people should not travel to Atlanta to party.”

Better yet, folks shouldn’t travel to Atlanta, period, especially those among the NBA’s greatest players.

If two, three or several more of these guys get infected, well, let’s just say that wouldn’t rank with something like Wilt scoring 100 in a game.

Did I say this was ridiculous?

The same league whose players are its biggest asset, and the same league that Forbes determined made a record $8.8 billion during its last full season in 2018-2019 while threatening a year ago to crush that figure by 8% before COVID-19 became the rage, and the same league that already has postponed more than two dozen games this season due to the pandemic . . .

This is the same league close to announcing its top honchos huddled with the NBA Players Association to determine it’s fine with sending the league’s 24 best players to one spot — a COVID-19 hot spot — to play a game that nobody cares about.

Yeah, for the 2020 NBA All-Star Game in Chicago, TV ratings rose 8% over the previous year, but that’s like saying dirt tastes better than mud.

The 2019 NBA All-Star Game in Charlotte continued a flat trend (or worse) by finishing as the least-watched NBA All-Star Game (3.8 representing 6.8 million viewers) out of the 72 in history.

Imagine how many viewers would switch to “Gomer Pyle” reruns or something if Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard and other megastars opt out of the 2021 NBA All-Star Game.

“I have zero energy and zero excitement about an All-Star game this year,” LeBron James told reporters last week as the king of those megastars from his kingdom with the Los Angeles Lakers. “I don’t even understand why we’re having an All-Star game, but it’s an agreement that the players association and the league came about.”

To translate, LeBron will play anyway.

The same goes for others, including De’Aaron Fox, the Sacramento Kings point guard who told reporters, “If I’m going to be brutally honest, I think it’s stupid. If we have to wear a mask and do all of this for a regular game, then what’s the point of bringing the All-Star Game back?

“Obviously, money makes the world go round, so it is what it is. I mean, I’m not really worried about it. If I’m voted, so be it.”

Money.

Fox said something about money.

According to ESPN.com, the NBA won’t have its usual separate TV deal for the All-Star Game this year. Each team also has 10 fewer games due to the pandemic. As a result, since NBA owners and players split basketball-related revenue nearly evenly, ESPN.com said both sides would make more cancelling the All-Star game and packing that weekend with regular-season games.

That said, if the past is indicative of the present, consider the following as the reason LeBron, Fox and others aren’t totally against dealing with this All-Star Game: Since 2018, CNBC reported every player on the losing team gets $25,000 (which is more than enough to cover your hand sanitizer and mask costs for the weekend), and everybody on the winning team gets $100,000.

So it’s always about money.

It’s still nuts.