NBA All-Star weekend has some kind of mythical air about it. Thousands and thousands of people descend on the city of choice and stories suitable for only select ages are made and re-told. It's a madhouse. It's almost certainly madder in Los Angeles than it would be in a lot of other cities, but it's hard to say if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

The marquee event, allegedly, is Sunday night's All-Star game. This year the league famously threw conference-based teams to the wind and had the two top vote-getters - LeBron James and Stephen Curry - draft players to form their teams. The theory is that the past few years' games (notably last year's 192-182 defense-heavy snooze-fest and the year before's 196-173 eyesore) have been so non-competitive that they needed to spice things up and find a way to make this year's game exciting.

Unfortunately, switching up the alignment of teams isn't going to cut it. What needs to happen is for players to actually care. Enter two more wrinkles into this year's All-Star game. The first is that players from the winning team will receive a $100,000 bonus whereas the losing team gets less (it's unclear if the losing team receives $50,000 per player or the $25,000 per player which was awarded to losing teams in the past). The second tweak is that the NBA is contributing $500,000 to charity for the game: The winning team gets $350,000 to their preferred charity - chosen by the captain - and the losing team gets $150,000 to theirs.

This is all fine and dandy, but the players still have to play. Enter LeBron James.

On an absolute must-watch piece of online media, LeBron James and Kevin Durant rode around Akron in December and talked about life while being rich, black, and incredibly talented men. It's riveting. It's insightful. It's powerful. Watch it here if you haven't already seen it. Seriously. Take the 15 minutes and watch it right now. I'll wait.

Early in the video, we see LeBron James talking about what an honor it is to be an All-Star. It's surprisingly candid and cool. Then he talks about how "we gotta do a better job, I agree," and then Durant says "we can definitely take it to the next level." LeBron even says it's their "obligation" to go after each other. But what are the odds he actually does it?

Frankly, if anyone can do it, it's LeBron James. While his team has been decimated with injuries (Kevin Love, DeMarcus Cousins, John Wall, and Kristaps Porzingis all are missing from the original lineup), he's still the unquestionable leader of this event. LeBron is in his 14th All-Star game. Nobody else has more than nine, and that's Durant. As James continues to be outspoken on social issues, on setting the bar for future players to get paid, and on how to make sure players have control over their careers, he simply adds to his legacy in the NBA.

In short, guys pay attention to LeBron James. If LeBron James really puts in half an effort in this All-Star game, we could be looking at an all-timer. Imagine watching LeBron set the tone after halftime (because really, the first half is about showing off and having fun) and then getting to see Durant and Curry go at it or Durant trying to post up Draymond Green. How could that not be fun?

It would harken back to the days when my friends and I would talk about how the NBA had - by a huge amount - the best All-Star game in sports. What made it so special was that these guys would screw around for a bit, rack up points, and then as the 4th quarter rolled around they would all realize "Hey, I like winning. I should try to do that." It made for drama. Even in games that weren't that close, you got to see Kobe and Shaq drag an All-Star team that included Peja Stojakovic and Wally Szczerbiak to a win over Tracy McGrady in the backboard-self-alley-oop game. It was fun. It can be fun again.

LeBron can make that happen. Whether or not he will is another story.