Who Wants to See Zone Defense During All-Star Weekend?

As you can see above, Sunday's All-Star game ended with some fireworks, but the first 47 minutes often left something to be desired. It's a fun exhibition, a chance for the league's biggest personalities to shine on and off the court -- so why did the Western Conference do its best to sap the life out of the game by playing zone? That's what several players from the East were left wondering after the game.

In a post-game interview for NBA TV, Craig Sager asked Kevin Garnett if it was fun watching his teammates go 8-for-35 from behind the arc. "Well I felt like it was the only option," Garnett said. "It was the first All-Star game I've seen that you couldn't into the paint, and that was odd. I'm sure they had a strategy for winning. ... It's a weekend for entertaining and high-flying, I don't think people want to see zones and all that."

His remarks seemed to be the most pointed, but that could just be because they weren't edited down for space by a newspaper reporter. But LeBron James ...

As for what happened in the blowout, James said, ''The West played a zone on us all night.''

... and Dwight Howard ...

"I think on defense they played a zone, so we couldn't get to the rack," Howard said. "It was tough for us to get into the paint. It seemed like they had Shaq, Yao and Amare and Tim (Duncan) and everybody in the paint loaded up."

... pointed out the West's strategy after the game. The East won last year, so I can't completely blame the West for wanting to even the score (nor would I be surprised if Phil Jackson and Kobe Bryant still carry a chip on their shoulder for losing to the Celtics in the NBA Finals), but it's a shame the win-at-all-costs attitude took away from the flow of the game. The weird thing is that the NBA really can't win -- usually people complain that the players don't try hard enough, and here I am complaining they tried too hard. I guess I just want that impossible middle-ground.

It'd help if the league did a better job ensuring better balance on the rosters, although that's not always an option. With Chris Bosh sitting out with injury, the East's bench was exclusively comprised of perimeter players -- 6-foot-10 Rashard Lewis was the only "big" man on the bench, but he's an oversized small forward who's leading the league in three-point attempts. Giving David Lee an invitation over Mo Williams to replace Bosh might have helped a little, but he's not enough of a scoring threat to think it would have really changed things.

What will fix things? Time. Free agency. Trades. In other words, I'm complaining for nothing. The West is so full of talented big men that guys like Steve Nash, Deron Williams, Carmelo Anthony and Al Jefferson get snubbed -- all four of those guys would have been voted onto the East's roster by the coaches, easy. The East might have two of the top three teams in the league, but the West still has most of the talent -- and that made for a less-than-thrilling All-Star game.