Adam Silver was visibly upset by the lack of competitiveness in last year’s All-Star Game, sarcastically congratulating the winners after the final buzzer, “To the Eastern Conference All-Stars: You scored the most points. Well. … Congratulations.”
It’s been a perennial problem for the NBA’s signature weekend. No one plays defense, many stars take it easy or sit out to protect against injuries and the game is full of undefended highlight-reel dunks and deep, deep three-pointers. In fact, with teams thrown together and All-Stars able to sink shots from 30+ feet, you could argue that playing defense in the exhibition game is nearly impossible.
The league has tried having the league’s leading vote-getters draft teams, either a week in advance of the game or in a schoolyard-style pick before the game began. That made it confusing for fans, who had to remember who happened to be on Team LeBron or Team Giannis while wearing All-Star-specific jerseys with player names low on their backs. The league also tried using a quarter-by-quarter score and playing to a certain score number, the so-called “Elam Ending.”
Those tweaks all failed to create a competitive game. Now the NBA is considering a format they’ve used for the Rising Stars Challenge since 2022. They selected 21 rookies and sophomores, plus seven G League players, and separated them into four eight-man teams. Then the teams played a semifinal and final, to a “target score” of 40 in the semifinals and 50 in the final.
The NBA’s proposed plan is to separate the 24 All-Stars into three teams, with the Rising Stars Challenge winner being the fourth, for a similar three-game tourney. Perhaps the idea is that the All-Stars won’t want to be embarrassed by a team of young stars and G Leaguers and thus play harder, though the result might be that the Rising Stars winner gets crushed.
But the NBA could make the All-Star Game infinitely more watchable, whatever form it takes, simply by making one adjustment: Letting players wear their team’s jerseys. It’s hard to imagine that the NBA sells a significant number of All-Star jerseys, especially given that each NBA team already has five different jerseys they wear each season.
Maybe it won’t be more competitive, but at least casual fans can tell who’s dribbling and shooting the ball if they’re not wearing a generic All-Star jersey and playing on a team they were randomly selected for. Eliminating conference affiliations and forming eight-man teams only makes things more confusing.
It’s hard enough to keep track of who is on each NBA team in the regular season. Just ask Charles Barkley.
