YouTube Gold: The 1987 NBA All-Star Game

Basketball was very different in 1987 and in some ways better

The 1980’s were a golden era for NBA basketball. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson’s epic rivalry had jolted the league back to life and then, not long after, players like Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Dominique Wilkins, Isaiah Thomas and Clyde Drexler took the game to new heights. You had the Celtics, Showtime, the Bad Boys and the Twin Towers, and of course Julius Erving and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were still around.

The 1987 All-Star Game kind of crystallized where the league was. The East started Bird, Jordan, Erving, Wilkins and Moses Malone and had Kevin McHale and Isaiah Thomas coming off the bench, along with Barkley.

The West had Magic, Olajuwon, Ralph Sampson, James Worthy and Alvin Robertson as starters and brought Jabbar, Mark Aguirre and Tom Chambers, who would be the MVP of the game, off the bench (he actually was named to play for Sampson, who was injured).

The three pointer was more of an accent than a main feature at that point and players worked harder to get to the rim, which wasn’t easy with guys like Olajuwon, Sampson and McHale inside.

As it turned out the West won 154-149 in overtime. The era remains one of the high points of NBA basketball.