“I have zero energy and zero excitement about an All-Star Game this year,” LeBron James said last month. “I don’t even understand why we’re having an All-Star Game.” With dozens of games this season already canceled, fans almost entirely absent, and players physically and mentally exhausted from the grind of a compacted schedule and COVID protocols, LeBron’s apathy toward the league’s insistence on its midseason exhibition makes perfect sense. James is hardly the only player who feels this way.

Karl-Anthony Towns, who lost his mother and six other relatives to the virus and endured a frightening experience with it himself, remarked: “I personally don’t believe there should be an All-Star Game, but what the hell do I know? Obviously, I haven’t dealt with COVID.” “The big dog says he has zero excitement and zero energy for the All-Star Game, and I’m the same way. I really right now don’t care about the All-Star Game. We cannot see our families,” Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo said, alluding to James.

James Harden agreed: “Especially with a condensed schedule, it feels like everything was forced upon players. It’s already draining to be playing a lot of games in a week. I feel like that was a week for us to kind of relax, be with our families and kind of take a step back away from basketball.” Los Angeles Clippers’ Paul George felt similarly: “I’m not a fan of it. With everything that’s going on, I think it’s just [not] smart.”