A Plea For Adam Sandler To Play In The 2020 NBA All-Star Celebrity Game

Adam Sandler likes basketball a lot. He’s a die-hard fan of the New York Knicks, has never once seemed out of place when he’s been tasked with discussing ball on a TV or podcast appearance while promoting a movie, and oftentimes finds ways to get hoops into his films — the example I remember the fondest is when he plays 1-on-1 with Michael Irvin in The Longest Yard, but there are other examples of basketball making its way into other Sandler flicks, too.

Sandler’s newest movie, Uncut Gems, involves basketball in a big way, as his co-star is future Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Kevin Garnett. This is all to say that Sandler loves hoops, and as it turns out, he can hoop a bit, too. Sandler is known for playing a ton of ball, and in a video that circulated around the Twitterverse on Thursday, we saw that the Sand Man can drop dimes, even when he is wearing the baggiest clothing I have ever seen in a pickup game.

— ≠ (@SenseiSigh) December 20, 2019

This is a pretty good pass, something that you cannot pull off unless you have played a ton of basketball and have an inherent understanding of where to put a ball and how people move and all that stuff. All of this is to say: Adam Sandler is a pretty good basketball player, and as such, I want to see him involved in the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game.

I am a sucker for celebrity games at All-Star weekends, because even by the lofty standard set by the silliness that comes during the weekend, they’re usually hilarious. Everyone knows what’s up, and before last year’s game, I recall the league playing a hype video that was exclusively ugly moments from games in the past. There are usually some pretty good basketball players — Quavo is a walking bucket, Famous Los balled out last year, Terrell Owens’ performances in 2008 and 2009 were quite good — but it’s generally celebs who aren’t exactly the second coming of LeBron James playing against other celebs who aren’t exactly the second coming of LeBron James, which I say lovingly.

Bringing in Sandler would immediately raise the floor of whatever team he is on, but also, that doesn’t matter, because I mostly wanna just see Billy Madison cross up, I dunno, Dr. Oz. Lord only knows if Sandler would actually want to play in the game — perhaps if Uncut Gems was coming out in a few months it could be sold as a way to get PR for the movie — because he might be way too famous for this, but we at Dime would like to call on the NBA and Sandler to work something out here. And if it means that Garnett plays in the Celebrity Game too (because admit it, you know that Kevin Garnett has no off switch when he steps onto the court and that would make a fun exhibition an absolute blast), well, that’d be a fun added bonus.