This Sunday in Hawaii, the NFL will present its first near-meaningless game in over a month. A few weeks later the NBA will host an equally irrelevant weekend extravaganza. Unlike Major League Baseball, there are no league implications.  The Super Bowl is already set in New Orleans and the Eastern Conference will not host the NBA Finals if they win the scrimmage on February 17. The only way either game means anything going forward is if players get hurt, which is why anyone even rumored to be injured is staying out of Hawaii. All that is at stake is pride, and even that is debatable.

No one would use the word “important” to describe either game, but few would argue that the Pro Bowl is more entertaining than the NBA all-star game. The Pro Bowl garners less and less of an audience each year, and tent-poling it between championship weekend and the Super Bowl has not saved it.

The NFL could change more than the date. Moving the Pro Bowl out of Hawaii and rotating it around cities like the NBA All-Star Game may make it more of a community event. But, despite the dominant popularity of the league, it is unlikely the NFL will create an all-star game to rival the NBA All-Star Game.

Set aside the NBA All-Star Weekend experience for a second.  Some think the slam-dunk and three-point contests alone are better than the Pro Bowl.  I don’t want to focus on the selection processes, either.  I just want to attempt to explain the difference in quality of each league’s all-star game.

That difference has nothing to do with the quality of play in either league.  The NFL and the NBA are both loaded with so much talent that you could argue either one is experiencing its golden age.  Football may be the United State’s most popular game, but basketball will always be able to showcase the talents of its best more effectively in the current “all-star” setting.  The differences show up because of the insignificance of the games, but stem from the way the sports are played.

High-level offenses are exciting to watch in both sports, but that changes when defensive quality suffers. In the Pro Bowl defenders are handcuffed; no one wants to get hurt. It’s a high-risk, low (or no) reward situation. The players involved may take pride in winning the game, but fans often forget the result (until the next game comes along and they start wondering who won the previous year).

NBA fans may not remember All-Star Game results either, but that does not mean the games are not entertaining. Obviously the level of contact in basketball is inferior to full-contact football.  Often defense is about proximity; the closer you are to the man, the less likely he is to make the shot.

Of course that doesn’t mean there is high-level defense in the NBA All-Star game, only a higher likelihood that it can exist. What really makes it more entertaining than the Pro Bowl is a smaller gap between All-Star Game defense and defense in the regular season (or postseason).

But even if you believe the gaps between defensive intensity are even, there is something working in the NBA’s favor: the basket. It is a last line of defense that doesn’t exist in football. If a safety bites on a play-action fake and the cornerback gets beat, all that needs to happen are two things: the quarterback must throw the ball and the receiver must catch it. Depending on the length and quality of the throw, this looks like an easy task for even marginal football players. In basketball, if a couple of off-ball screens set up an open three-point shot, there is still an inhuman force separating the shooter from his target: the rim. There is no sense of completion if the shooter can’t make the shot. In basketball, defense is tangibly built into the game before players even step on the court.  The initial learning curve for being a great offensive basketball player comes across to an American audience as much higher than being a great running back or wide receiver.  As kids a large number of us throw, catch and run.  Much fewer try to throw a ball into a hoop.

On the broadest level, football is a more strategic game: more players, more rules and more complex offensive and defensive schemes.  It’s tough to compare the sports.  In basketball, any player can dominate a game.  The impact of one player on a basketball team is exponentially larger than the impact one player on a football team; there are less basketball players per team and each one has to play offense and defense.  Basketball is fluid while football starts and stops.  In basketball there are slam-dunks and alley-oops.

Unless the NFL makes the Pro Bowl significant to the season, it will never merit the attention of the NBA All-Star Game.  Basketball is simply more equipped to be entertaining when nothing is at stake.