Imagine an annual celebration of a sport’s best players being held in a city that players love to visit — only now they would rather not play in the game or travel to the city.
Imagine a weekend generally so intertwined with the entertainment industry that it’s filled with celebrity sightings, concerts and parties suddenly being subjected to deserved lampooning and being reduced to a shameless money grab.
Imagine Atlanta, a city that has benefited from staging major sports events so much that it wears that history as a badge of honor, being so put off by playing host to the NBA All-Star Game amid a pandemic that the mayor expresses her concerns to the league. “People should not travel to Atlanta to party,” Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in a statement. “There will be no NBA sanctioned events open to the public and we strongly encourage promoters, clubs, bars, etc. not to host events in the city related to this…