Reggie Miller Went Full '51 Year Old' By Blaming Millennials For The NBA All Star Game Becoming A Joke

Uproxx- “That’s what we saw [Sunday] night was a video game,” Miller said. “It’s all scoring and there’s no defense. So yes, the younger generation, the millennials [say], ‘Oh, that was a fantastic All-Star Game. Guys of our generation, we’re like, ‘This is a joke, this is an absolute joke and mockery of the game.’”


I know people are going to want to crush Reggie Miller for generalizing an entire generation of basketball fans in an attempt to shame them for the complete lack of effort and interest shown by professional athletes who act on their own accord, but I think we should give him a little credit here. Just listen to that whole interview. He lasted a hell of a lot longer than most 51 year old's would before inevitably going the "back in MY day" route to glorify the gimmicky games that he played in that weren't nearly as competitive as he's making them sound. Yeah, eventually he went back to the well by unjustly criticizing millennials, but it's not the first time we have had to bear the brunt of revisionist history.

Reggie Miller couldn't show me a person in their 20's that would try to argue that what took place on Sunday afternoon was a "fantastic All-Star game" without also showing me someone that doesn't know what a pick-and-roll is, so it's just as asinine for him to "lob" blame towards a whole age demographic as it is for the best athletes in the world to give up damn near 400 points in 48 minutes. That said, I appreciate him entertaining the idea that the players have no incentive to compete at a high level in a game that doesn't fucking matter during one of the lone breaks in their exhausting schedule before taking shots at thee most nauseatingly overused scapegoat. At least he tried to dance around the answer that has been engrained in him by the decade of retirement that directly coincides with the rebirth of the NBA's popularity before turning back into the curmudgeon that has let time cloud his memory of the high scoring, defenseless affairs he took part in during the 90's. Waiting two and half whole minutes to crap on the present might not be the greatest gift to those that fall under the excessively ambiguous label of "millennials", but we should still be grateful because it's the thought that counts...