The Aftermath Pool photo by Bob Donnan Marc Stein A note, for starters, about the greatest weekend of my professional life: I still don’t quite believe the wondrous phone call I received Thursday morning from the Basketball Hall of Fame as I was arriving at the airport for my Charlotte-bound flight, so I will simply pass along this news story from my @NYTSports brother Benjamin Hoffman to further explain my euphoria. Sportswriters, though, are famously grumpy, even in the best of times. So I can’t resist leading off my six takeaways from All-Star Weekend with a selfish lament — while acknowledging that it’s very poor form on my part to be complaining about anything at the moment. 1) I wanted to see and hear more of Michael Jordan. And I’m sure you did, too. The Hornets’ owner hosted his annual (and exclusive) Friday night party, said a few words at Sunday’s Legends Brunch and made a brief on-court appearance during Sunday’s All-Star Game — on his 56th birthday — to hand the proverbial All-Star torch to the Chicago Bulls, who will serve as 2020 hosts. Yet he generally kept the most limited profile he could manage, which is the norm for His Airness these days. I understand that’s the way he likes to operate. I imagine he restricts his interviews because he sees little upside in fielding G.O.A.T. questions at every turn. I know that he sees wisdom in staying behind the scenes as much as possible, because Michael Jeffrey Jordan inevitably soaks up all the oxygen in any room he occupies. But the fact is that M.J. was regarded by many as the host of the biggest festival in Charlotte’s history, attracting an estimated 150,000 visitors to the city. He belonged in this spotlight as much as anyone. 2) The N.B.A. resumes play Thursday night with one question lording over all others: Is King James really going to miss the playoffs in his first season in Los Angeles? LeBron James’s Lakers are the only sub-.500 team in California at 28-29 and face the league’s ninth-hardest remaining schedule, according to Tankathon.com. The good news is that the 32-27 Clippers, who currently occupy the West’s eighth and final playoff spot, recently traded away their best player (Tobias Harris) and will keep their first-round pick from being conveyed to Boston if they fall out of the top eight. The Clippers, in other words, are conflicted and weakened. And thus catchable for their fellow Staples Center tenants. The No. 9 Sacramento Kings, by contrast, are two full games ahead of the Lakers at 30-27 and just made a win-now move at the trade deadline by acquiring Harrison Barnes from Dallas. When I crossed paths with James before Sunday night’s tipoff, in my weekend cameo with ESPN Radio, he acknowledged that hauling the Lakers to the playoffs will be a daunting assignment. But he also insisted that he’s starting to feel better physically at the most important time after missing a career-worst 17 consecutive games with a groin strain he sustained on Christmas. “It’s going to be tough, but we shouldn’t want it any other way,” James said. “I look forward to the challenge — and I’m getting healthy, too.” 3) The well, actually crowd is indeed correct. Isiah Thomas did connect with Dominique Wilkins on an unforgettable alley-oop in Magic Johnson’s annual summer game at the old Fabulous Forum in 1990 in which Isiah bounced the ball high off the hardwood from the left wing for ‘Nique to slam it through. Yet that doesn’t diminish how breathtaking it was Sunday night when Stephen Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo took it a step further. Curry’s pass, for the record, bounced even higher than Isiah’s — higher than the top of the backboard — and pleased Steph as much as any play I’ve ever seen him make. I had an opportunity to briefly visit with Curry at halftime, thanks to that weekend spell moonlighting as ESPN Radio’s in-game reporter. When I asked him if it was the best pass of his career, Curry said: “By far.” 4) My good buddy Marcus Thompson III of The Athletic came away from All-Star Weekend with quite the inquiry: Will Golden State try to sign The Greek Freak when he’s a free agent in July 2021? It’s the sort of the question only #thisleague spawns more than two years before a star player hits free agency. But I understand completely why Marcus wrote it. This is something worth monitoring. It’s also worth noting that Antetokounmpo may never make it to free agency. I’ve said many times that one of the most striking things about Giannis — if you can ever get past his otherworldly athleticism — is how much he loves Milwaukee. Given his current situation with the ever-blossoming Bucks, they have to feel far better about getting him to sign his “supermax” extension in the summer of 2020 than New Orleans ever did with Anthony Davis. Yet it’s likewise undeniably true that Steph and Giannis are buddies who are both represented by the same agency (Octagon) and share a mutual admiration that has resulted in Curry and Antetokounmpo selecting each other first overall with the No. 1 overall picks as captains in the first two All-Star drafts. I can promise you, furthermore, that the Warriors have internally mused about a run at Giannis — however futile it may prove to be — in the event they can’t convince Kevin Durant to re-sign this summer. Trying to sign the most attractive free agent available is on the first page of the Golden State owner Joe Lacob’s playbook. Speaking of the All-Star draft … 5) Televising the draft wound up hurting no one’s feelings. There was so little fuss in the end about who was picked last — Washington’s Bradley Beal for Team LeBron — that I had to look it up Monday because I had already forgotten the answer. Will that be the case next year when there are likely no “special roster additions” from the commissioner’s office to create a third round in the draft? I suppose it’s a fair question. Dirk Nowitzki, not Beal, was technically the last player picked when LeBron had to choose between him and his dear friend Dwyane Wade in the extra round. Of course, being the pest that I am on such matters, I will continue to lobby the league to take this whole thing up a notch (or three) by having the captains pick their teams playground-style before the game. Let’s print up reversible jerseys for every All-Star and divvy up the 24 (or so) players right before tipoff with cameras rolling and microphones on. I have to believe that sort of scene would help make the actual All-Star Game more competitive, too. 6) One of the most powerful quotes I heard all weekend came from the TNT analyst Charles Barkley. I figured Barkley would be as supportive as any ex-player of the various stars in the past decade — essentially starting with James when he teamed up with Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami in the summer of 2010 — who have tried to take greater control over their futures and legacies. Wrong. Barkley is convinced that the advent of so-called Superteams could well lead small-market owners to try to wrest some control back through a labor impasse when the league’s current collective bargaining agreement expires. Both sides hold a mutual opt-out after the 2022-23 season. “I hear all these clowns on TV talking about, ‘It’s great that all these players are exuding these powers,’ ” Barkley told a small group of reporters Thursday in an off-set interview. “Let me tell you guys something: Workers ain’t never going to have power over their ownership. Ever. Now it might work for a couple guys here or there, but in the history of the world, no workers have ever overtaken the people who own a business. And when these guys are sitting at home locked out in a couple years, I want y’all to remember I told y’all that.”