The NBA’s new format for the All-Star game could have been a success. Dividing the field of honorees into smaller teams who play quick games in a short tournament is a novel enough concept that, at first, it did seem to inject new competitive life into the evening. This felt especially true when Victor Wembanyama, there for the first time, terrorized the floor with his uniquely spacious capacities. If no one else was going to do it, Wemby was going to make sure everyone worked a bit harder for their big-stage glory.

But as is too often the case in modern sports, the money men were not satisfied to have the game modified in only such a technical way. The league’s broadcasting and sponsorship partners treated the shift in configuration as a chance to practice Disaster Capitalism; when change is in the air, that’s a moment in which the mighty find even deeper grooves for their profit talons. This opportunism was personified, on All-Star night, by the baffling ever-presence of comedian Kevin Hart and a smarmy, troubling influencer who the world has allowed to call himself “Mr. Beast.”

Neither man, importantly, plays sports at a professional level. As a basketball fan, their presence as sour exclamation points punctuating an especially endless churn of advertisements was unwelcome, because I had turned the television on to see the game I love actually being played. I am not a tough sell, on that front, either; the All-Star games of recent years, so often complained about, have been perfectly fine by me. 48 minutes of world-famous guys running up and down the court, carefree, heaving churlishly deep jumpers and attempting increasingly goofy alley-oops with each other? It’s not my favorite form of the sport, but you can definitely sign me up to watch it.

I’m happy to watch the new thing, too, but only if it’s actually being offered. The bait-and-switch in its place is the anti-solution to a problem that was never all that clearly identified—the notion that All-Star games used to feature vigorous, consistent effort requires more serious interrogation, for starters. If we could establish this frequently peddled truthism as something closer to fact, then we could start a discussion about solving the problem. That discussion, had seriously, would not include mention of Monsieurs Hart or Beast, who—despite Wemby’s best efforts—had the broadcast more engineered around them than any basketball player did.

The disgust that fans felt watching this garbage was experienced by the players, too. Say what you will about their lagging seriousness at this annual bonanza; none of them ever forced us to watch a bad comic roast or an insidious faux-optimist YouTuber like this. That Hart’s stale jabs were piped into the stadium speakers was especially irksome. As that was happening, we were all Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, visibly pissed off that so much attention was taken away from the game, only to be re-distributed to the least inspired riffage you’ve ever heard.

The state of Hart’s career, more broadly, is a useful piece of context here. A mildly known figure until about a decade ago, Hart’s stand-up and acting career exploded, and he is now in the rare air of being super-famous for the sake of fame itself, it seems; sometimes, society just needs certain people to be around a lot (whether this is a demand from the grassroots or one pushed down on us from the command room of the big media palace is another matter). 

What has Hart actually made, recently? Last year, he was in a paint-by-numbers Netflix heist story and a video game adaptation movie that was largely acknowledged as one of the worst films of the 21st century. He has no future film or television projects that are in active production. But he is definitely on the screen a lot. Usually in commercials, many of which he seems to film physically apart from his 30-second co-stars. Presumably, he regularly makes at least one million dollars to launch quips at people who are not in the room with him.

Good work, if you can get it, and exactly the kind of despised media arbitrage that NBA fans are afraid of, after watching last night’s monstrosity. Because what happens when the corporate milking at the edges of the main subject scales up so much that it displaces the thing itself? When the main event is a footnote to hours of dubious, unfunny programming? The NBA, if last night was any indication, seems determined to find the answers to these unfortunate questions.