You never want to make a mountain out of a molehill, but last year, when the All-Star game was over, it was pretty clear that we had not seen anything close to great basketball. And here I quote (um, rather oddly, myself -- and Chauncey Billups):

So, um, was the 2007 NBA All-Star Game a good basketball game?

"No." Chauncey Billups didn't hesitate for a second. "I didn't like it at all. I loved being here. I loved being a part of it, but I don't like it at all. We need something to make the guys play a little harder, to compete against one another."

He's saying something that was blatantly evident from press row. This was not high-level basketball, and nobody claimed it was. This was a creampuff -- 99 percent air.

"If I paid my hard-earned money to see KG and Kobe and Wade, I want to see them really play. You know what I'm saying?" Billups said. "Not practice. I want to see them play."

Billups said he even brought it up with his teammates, imploring them to at least try to win the game. And he didn't buy the playing not to get injured approach: "I could get hurt just walking back here. There's nothing you can do about that. I'm not one to dive on the floor or take crazy charges. I don't expect that. But I expect that they'll at least compete against one another."

What was worrisome about it was that while it is an exhibition, it is still the exhibition. What happens in this game is at least in some small way a measure of what happens in the NBA. You can have it be excessively flashy. But you can't have it be miserably poor.

So how'd it go this year?

Better. Nothing is ever perfect, but this was certainly better, and extremely watchable. The victorious East, notably, played tough much of the game, including several big plays attacking the basket, as well as some defensive intensity in the late stages of the game.

"My big rah rah speech," explained East Coach Doc Rivers, "was I asked 'what was the score from last year?' They didn't know it, [it was 153-132] but they knew they lost pretty handily. Jason Kidd talked about it openly. I heard Chauncey talking about it. Joe Johnson talked about it. They lost in a big way last year. And I don't care what type of game it is. They remember that. And I thought our guys came out to compete. They wanted to win the game. ... As a coach, that's what you want them talking about."

This year, people cared. Sure there were goof-off moments, like Rasheed Wallace's left-handed three-pointer, and Yao Ming's pair of misses from downtown. A little bit of special sauce early in the game is a healthy part of the All-Star tradition.

But this game had a little meat and potatoes, too.

Consider Chris Paul's state of mind going into the game: "Man, I was, oh, I couldn't eat. I couldn't think about nothing, man. Me and Brandon Roy was sitting there talking. I mean, when we were on the bus on our way to the game, we were like little kids. Stomach was turning, I don't think I could keep any food down or anything like that. Totally different from anything I've ever experienced playing on the USA Team or anything like that."

"You can tell," says Dwyane Wade, "at the end, we really wanted to win."

The East needed that desire, or something, to make up for a notable lack of size. Doc Rivers had played small -- with Ray Allen in for Chris Bosh, while the West had big players like Dirk Nowitzki, Amare Stoudemire, and Tim Duncan. He was about to bring in Bosh when Allen hit a big three. So Rivers decided to stay small.

"We were obviously concerned on the rebounds." said Coach Rivers. "LeBron helped us out with rebounds, because during the timeout we talked about that. We said, listen, they're going to stay big, we're going to stay small. It's a game of chicken, basically. And we need all you guys on the glass. And that's what we did. I thought they did a nice job."

They would have to close the gap with scrap -- the kind of desire and hustle that was absent last year. And they did. Over the final five or so minutes, the East's small lineup matched the West with seven rebounds apiece. For the East, five of those boards came from little players Jason Kidd, Dwyane Wade, and Ray Allen.

Ray Allen was the key player for the East down the stretch, and their leading scorer. "In the beginning it's like a honeymoon. Everybody's trying to show off their shoes," he explains. "Carmelo had a pair of shoes on, he took them off, put another pair on. I don't know if you guys saw that, but I was telling on him just then. And then, you throw the alley oops. ... By the fourth quarter, everybody's here for a reason. Everybody has that same competitive nature, it kicks in and you want to win the game. ... We started talking about what we were going to do in huddling in and coming out of the timeout on the floor. We had our assignments what exactly we were going to do."

When players are focused on winning and playing hard? The quality of play can't help but improve, and we're all the better for it.