1964 was quite a year, wasn’t it? The Beatles began the British Invasion of music, Cassius 
Clay won the World Heavyweight title from Sonny Liston and the average American’s income was $6000.
1964 was also the last year Boston hosted an NBA All-Star Game.
When I first began researching this, I thought there had to be a mistake, Certainly there was no shortage of All-Stars from the Celtics through the years (19 players totaling 86 elections since ’64). There have been no shortage of championships (10 since the ’64 season, which doesn’t include the one they won in that year).
And while there were some lean years in the Shawmut Center turned FleetCenter turned TD Banknorth Garden, everyone loves an All-Star game and the stands would have been filled.
Need more evidence?
The list of cities that have hosted an All-Star game since Boston did is long: Los Angeles, NYC, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Richfield, OH (yes, Richfield hosted an All-Star Game). There are even cities on the list that don’t have NBA teams anymore (St. Louis, Cincinnati, San Diego) or never had one (Las Vegas).
However, the biggest slap in the face has to be the number of the cities that have hosted it multiple times. Some of the notables: LA hosting three times, Phoenix three times, NYC twice, Chicago twice and Philly four times if you include the lockout year game that never happened.
This is getting to be a bit ridiculous. What’s the justification here – the desire to have the game only in warm-climate cities? If so, that is ridiculous and unfair to a majority of the league. Basketball is played in the winter time across the U.S. and Canada. If the high-level execs and sponsors can’t cut it for three days, that’s tough. Do what the rest of us do – deal with it.
With revived interest in the Celtics, an ownership group hell-bent on quality and a championship team that will be competitive for years to come, it is time for the city of Boston to once again welcome the league’s best in a three-day orgy of dunks, mascots and zero defense.
It’s been 45 years. End the drought and bring the All-Star Game back to Boston in 2011…or else we’ll sick Kevin Garnett and Tommy Heinsohn on you.
Josh Nason is the founder of Small White Ball, a New England-based
sports and media blog. He can be reached at josh [at] smallwhiteball
[dot-com].
Small White Ball...a boston sports blog 