I know there’s a lot going on in the world, including the possible overthrow of Libya’s tyrant Muammar el-Qaddafi, but I’m not done bitching about this All-Star weekend, and I’d like to turn your attention to this crap that is the “celebrity” game.

I thought the idea behind a celebrity game was to have people who have never played professional basketball show off their modest talents in an otherwise uninteresting game of full-court pickup. Yet this and several previous games have been packed with old, washed-up NBA players. Scottie Pippen, Jalen Rose, A.C. Green–these are not celebrities.

Justin Bieber, Jason Sedakis, Arne Duncan–those guys are fair game (although Duncan played professional hoops in Australia, we’ll let that slide). If you want ex-NBA players, have a veterans game of some sort, but don’t put Pippen on the court to block the shot of a sixteen-year-old sex idol.

Admitedly, I have a vested interest in promoting an
all-real-celebrities Celebrity All-Star game because it is one of my
foremost ambitions to someday play in a Celebrity All-Star game. Hell,
every time I shoot around at the gym, I consider it training for a day
when I’ll have to make a tough bounce pass to Topher Grace or catch an
alley-(layup)-oop from a streaking Paul Bettany.

What I do not
want to do is step on the court and have to gaurd Chris Webber or a
recently retired Kobe Bryant. That ain’t cool.

(Also, in an
aside that matters not at all but I nevertheless found interesting,
during the All-Star game, Craig Seger interviewed Justin Beiber and
asked him what was the craziest thing one of his fans had ever done. I
found this question particularly hilarious because while Beiber
diplomatically said, “Some of them blocked the car I was in so we
couldn’t drive away,” you absolutely know the real answer is something
like, “Two of them fellated me under a restaurant table.” I’m sorry,
but I just had to point that out.)