The last really good NBA All-Star Game was in 2020, which was both the first year of the Elam Ending format and just a few weeks after Kobe Bryant’s tragic death. Players took the game more seriously than we’ve seen in quite some time, as it was a league-wide celebration of the Lakers legend, but since then the game has fallen back into old habits of being a glorified pickup run with barely a hint of defense being played.
That has led to fans tuning out and TV networks being upset, and Adam Silver seemed like a broken man after last year’s game was the highest scoring in history, handing Giannis and the East the All-Star Game trophy with the glowing praise of “you scored the most points. Well, congratulations.” The truth is, the All-Star Game just isn’t important enough for players to go all-out, especially with how much money is at stake for them nowadays. It’s no longer the biggest national stage some of them will get to show out and build their profile, and the result is a bunch of guys trying not to get hurt while producing a few highlights.
For that reason, the league needs to get creative. We offered our thoughts on what that should look like last year, as they’ve bounced back-and-forth between formats and how they pick teams to varying degrees of success. This year we might see a significant change to the format, as ESPN’s Shams Charania brought word that the league is in deep discussions on a new format that would be similar what they did with the Rising Stars Game, breaking the All-Star rosters into 4 teams and having them play a semifinal game and then the winners of those playing in the final. The teams would be 3 teams of 8 All-Stars and the winning team of the Rising Stars Challenge from Friday.
Charania highlights how discussions around this format started at Summer League and have included league personnel, team executives, players (including Stephen Curry), and coaches, with significant momentum towards being adopted for the 2025 game in San Francisco. At the very least, you could bet that whatever team of All-Stars got matched up with the Rising Stars winners would likely have a little more juice to not lose, which would yield the intended results of raising the level of competition.
I think anything would be an improvement over a regular four-quarter game, and the Rising Stars games have been improved as a result of this format change. Even if they aren’t suddenly the greatest basketball games in history, they move quicker and when it’s close late the competitive juices get flowing in a way we don’t see often in the current All-Star format.