2008 Top 20, #8: Citing failures in New Orleans, NBA moving ‘09 All-Star to Jakarta

NEW ORLEANS, LA — Describing the All-Star Weekend in New Orleans as a “monumental error in judgment and a tremendous letdown,” NBA commissioner David Stern announced that next year’s All-Star Weekend will take on an East Asian flair.

“We felt like we had everything set up for a tremendously exciting and chaotic All-Star weekend,” Stern said. “We had a crime-addled, vulnerable city with tremendous racial tension and the lingering after-effects of one of the worst disasters in human history. Then we are going to infuse tens of thousands of people, thousands of celebrities, and 24 of the richest young professional athletes in the world. Throw in Bourbon Street – with its preponderance of strip clubs and vice – and all I can say is wow!”

Following last year’s chaotic All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas, which was punctuated by an incident involving NFL cornerback and All-Star Weekend fixture Adam “Pacman” Jones that left a strip club employee paralyzed, the league had high hopes for a raucous, unforgettable, highly illegal and morally reprehensible President’s Day Weekend in the Big Easy.

“Unfortunately, all we got was a great basketball game to culminate a weekend of incredible individual athletic accomplishment,” Stern said. “No shootings, not even at a strip club. No major arrests. I mean, seriously – how can half of the NBA be in New Orleans for a long weekend, and nobody even gets arrested? Kobe doesn’t get in any trouble? Allen Iverson doesn’t get in a fight? LeBron James and Dwight Howard go to bed at 9 pm? This league is becoming lame.”

Stern said that the dud of a weekend has led him to make changes to the plans for future All-Star Weekends. It is the commissioner’s hope and intent to relocate next year’s festivities from their planned location of Phoenix to Jakarta, Indonesia.

“Jakarta is the perfect place for us to take the NBA,” Stern said. “It is one of the most crime-ridden places on earth. It is virulently anti-American. And the violence, oh my! You could get killed walking down the street in a pair of Nikes. Imagine if you have $200,000 worth of bling hanging off of you! Plus, there are a ridiculous number of prostitutes in Jakarta – I already spoke to Pacman and he’s thrilled about the whole idea. QED.”

One of the added benefits of having the game in Indonesia is that it will be easier for Chinese fans to make the trip to watch Chinese sensation Yao Ming play.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s all well and good,” Stern said. “There are business reasons to play in Asia, and there’s a lot of money over there that we’d like to tap into. But the bottom line is that we love drama in the NBA. New Orleans couldn’t deliver the mail, but we’re fairly certain that Jakarta will. And hell, if they don’t, then I’m sure that the folks in Al Khartoum, Sudan, wouldn’t mind seeing Luol Deng lace them up again on a home court, and it wouldn’t be too hard for me to force him onto the All-Star roster. You never know.”