Barack Obama spoke for us all and pulled no punches, telling Tyrese Haliburton, “Y’all got to have a little more pride in that All-Star Game.”
“Y’all need to have a little more pride in that All-Star Game… It’s an insult to the game.” -Obama confronts Tyrese about the NBA All Star Game pic.twitter.com/ynmGQaJfBm
— TheYoungManAndTheThree (@OldManAndThree) October 23, 2024
The All-Star Game has been a disappointment for over a decade now. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver echoed what Obama said – remember how he handed out the trophy after last year’s game, “To the Eastern Conference All-Stars, you scored the most points. Well, congratulations.” — and did so for years. The All-Star Game turned into a non-competitive, hard-to-watch climax to a weekend celebrating the sport.
Silver didn’t give up on the game. However. And he and the league have another solution:
This year’s All-Star Game will likely feature four teams of eight players — three “All-Star” teams plus the team that wins Friday’s Rising Stars Challenge for freshmen and sophomores — competing in a mini-knockout tournament, story broken by ESPN’s Shams Charania. The report says the league is “in serious discussions” about this format change.
League officials discussed the new format on Friday with the Competition Committee comprising governors, team executives, players, coaches and union staff, sources said. The four teams would face each other in matchups — for example, Team 1 vs. Team 3 and Team 2 vs. Team 4 — and the winners move on to the final round of the tournament.
This is not unlike what the NHL did with its All-Star Game, although that league went even further and made it a 3-on-3 game, an entertaining exhibition that doesn’t resemble the sport during the regular season and playoffs. Silver is trying to avoid what the NFL eventually had to do – no more Pro Bowl game, just a flag football exhibition and some skill competitions.
NBA players — including Stephen Curry, whose Warriors will host this season’s All-Star Game in San Francisco in February — and team officials met with league officials to brainstorm ideas that could inject some life and competitiveness into the game. The league tried to have captains choose a team play style, which was entertaining but did nothing to save the game itself. The NBA increased the cash donated to charity on behalf of the winning team, but to no effect.
The only good All-Star Game in the last decade was 2020 in Chicago and that had a lot of things together. First, it was a close game and the first year of the Elam/Target score ending that was different. Much more importantly, the game took place weeks after the tragic death of Kobe Bryant (and his daughter Gigi, plus seven other souls on that helicopter) and there was an atmosphere of “we have to play hard to honor Kobe” that was missing otherwise. .
What drew the most interest in last year’s All-Star Game — and will return this season in some format — was Stephen Curry’s 3-point shootout against Sabrina Ionescu. Star-studded Saturday night was the best part of the weekend for a long time and the shootout just added to it.
Will another format change, this time a quick knockout round with smaller teams, change the dynamic around Sunday’s game? I’m skeptical, but it’s also worth a shot. The league has to try something. The reality is that the All-Star players are trying to avoid injury, plus it’s the day before the league takes most of a week off. Almost everyone in the All-Star Game has a charter flight on a nearby runway waiting to whisk them away to somewhere warm. The whole game has the feel of the last day of school.
Does changing the format change that player dynamic? The league has to try something, why not this?
