All-Star weekend featured new formats, but the same issues remain.

Here are three takeaways from the weekend’s events, which wrapped up after Shaquille O’Neal’s team beat Nikola Jokic and Charles Barkley’s team, 41-25, on Sunday in San Francisco:

1. The fact that Adam Silver thought that format would make the All-Star Game more entertaining is laughable. For some reason, the championship game, supposedly the weekend’s main event, included a 15-minute stoppage for a comedy routine in the middle of the game. If there’s one thing the weekend doesn’t need, it’s less basketball. That’s what fans got. Jokic helped Chuck’s Global Stars advance to the championship with two points, three assists and a rebound against Kenny Smith’s squad. Jokic’s team played Shaquille O’Neal’s game in the final, and he finished with four rebounds, two points and two assists in the loss. Earlier in the week, Julian Strawther, a late replacement for the injured Scoot Henderson, scored three points, grabbed a couple of rebounds and dished out an assist, as his team was eliminated by a hungry group of G League standouts. Fortunately for Strawther, he got to participate in All-Star weekend while not giving up too much of his break. Jokic wasn’t so lucky in what amounts to another wasted break for the Association’s top talents.

2. The NBA should borrow from the NHL. The 4 Nations Face-Off, a competition between NHL players from the United States, Canada, Finland and Sweden, replaced the standard All-Star game this year. Early returns are promising, especially after the Canada-United States game started with three quick fights. The NBA could use that sort of rivalry on display during its All-Star festivities. The United States and Canada could easily field respectable squads of top NBA talent, while players with European and African roots could make up the remaining two teams. You could keep the mini-tournament format with semifinals played to 50 points on Friday night with Sunday’s championship and third-place games being played to 100. That should make for a better product, and the NBA should be open to trying just about anything after the new format flopped hard.

3. At least Mac McClung was there. Even though the 26-year-old has played all of five minutes in the NBA season, the Magic guard won a third consecutive dunk contest. He scored a perfect 50 on all four of his inventive dunks. San Antonio’s Stephon Castle, who actually plays meaningful minutes in the NBA, put up a good fight, but McClung is in a class of his own when it comes to contest dunking. The most exciting part of the 3-point shootout, won by Miami’s Tyler Herro, and the Skills Challenge, won by Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley, was the San Antonio duo, Chris Paul and Victor Wembanyama, getting ejected by trying to skirt the rules of the Skills Challenge.