Fixing the NBA All-Star game is a matter of pride
By @RyanGrosman
Laced
December 2, 2024
We all know the NBA All-Star Game is broken.
It’s the uneventful event of the All-Star weekend. (Although, sadly, the Slam Dunk Contest often gives it a run for its money.)
It always comes down to this question: How do you motivate multimillionaire athletes to compete in a meaningless exhibition game? How do you get them to exert energy, play hard and be competitive when they’re risking injury with every drive to the rim, every jump for a rebound and every dive for a loose ball?
The NBA has been trying to solve this equation for years. It’s why they continue to come up with ways to overhaul the game.
NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver, thought he had the answer when he first instituted the team captains format in which the top two vote-getters pick their teammates, schoolyard style. Unfortunately, that didn’t work.
Again, Silver and the NBA thought they nailed it in 2020 when they completely revamped the game, itself. Each quarter acted as its own mini game, and the Elam Ending was added to the final quarter, giving the teams a target score with no game clock. There was also the nice touch of $100,000 donations going to the winning team’s youth charity.
The result was one of the most competitive, exciting and entertaining NBA All-Star Games in the last 20 years. A game that many NBA analysts and fans point to as the ideal for what the All-Star Game could and should be.
The first three quarters of the game displayed some competitiveness, but the intensity really shot up in the fourth. With Team Giannis leading Team LeBron 133–124 in cumulative points, 24, a tribute to the recently deceased Kobe Bryant, was added to 133 to set the target score at 157. Suddenly, the world’s top players had a look in their eyes that said, we ain’t losing this game.
The race to 157 had everything you could want and dream of. Defence. Shot blocking. Charges. Exploiting mismatches. Diving for balls. Drives to the rim. It was the closest thing to real game action that we haven’t seen in an All-Star Game in some time. I mean, just watch the final minutes.
However, as I outlined in a story about the 2020 All-Star Game, the success of this game was fool’s gold. It was the absolute perfect confluence of events. There were several factors involved as to why this particular game was the most competitive and intense game that we’ve seen in decades.
Here are the Coles Notes from my story:
· The newly minted All-Star Game MVP trophy was named after Kobe Bryant who tragically died a month earlier, so there was extra motivation to win MVP
· The Elam Ending was only effective because Team Giannis was leading Team LeBron by just 9 points, which meant the target score was easily achievable by both teams
· The kids from the charities were right there in the stands, watching the game, which gave further incentive for the teams to win each quarter
· The game featured ultra-competitors, like Kyle Lowry, who only know how to play one way — all out — and who were more than willing to play hard-nosed defence in a meaningless game (Lowry, himself, took multiple charges in key moments)
Even though the All-Star Games that followed used the exact same format, they didn’t possess the same set of star-aligning circumstances mentioned above. And so the games lacked the energy and competitiveness of 2020.
So, what’s the solution, you ask?
Besides money and championship rings, what’s the one thing NBA players care about the most? It’s pride.
Money isn’t going to be a motivating factor because most All-Star players have more money than they know what to do with. And winning the All-Star Game won’t get them any closer to a championship.
But what if their pride was on the line?
A recent report from Shams Charania of ESPN detailed a proposed reformatting of the game. A pick-up style tournament featuring four teams — three All-Star teams and the winning team from the Rising Stars Challenge. The semi-final games would have a target score of 40, while the final game would have a target score of 25.
This is great and all. But there is still ZERO incentive for the top NBA players to go hard and be competitive. Maybe they’ll try hard for the winning basket — to either make the final shot or stop it. But until then, it’ll be the same old boring watch…just a lot less of it.
Pride, however, is all the incentive these players need to play hard from start to finish.
Whoever came up with the idea to include a Rising Stars team stumbled onto something. And perhaps they didn’t even know it. Why have just one All-Star team play a Rising Stars team? Why not have both East and West All-Star teams play a Rising Stars team?
Imagine you’re LeBron James or Kevin Durant or Steph Curry and you lose to a Rising Stars team. Their pride would be hit. Hard. And the social media blowback would be deafening. How could the world’s best players lose to a bunch of rookies and sophomores?
I don’t see these established players letting this happen. And they’ll play hard to make sure it won’t.
So, here’s my proposal to revamp the 2025 NBA All-Star Game:
· Merge the Shooting Stars Challenge and All-Star Game
· A four-team mini tournament featuring West All-Stars, East All-Stars, West Rising Stars and East Rising Stars
· Two semi-final games consisting of West All-Stars vs. West Rising Stars and East All-Stars vs. East Rising Stars with a target score of 70
· The winners play each other in the finals with a target score of 40
Why this works
We keep East and West teams separate instead of mish-mashing them.
This format kills two birds with one stone because the Rising Stars Challenge also isn’t the most entertaining of games. They, too, adopted the mini tournament-style format a few years back to add some more juice to the product. But the game (now games) still lacks a spark.
The NBA stars will play extra hard, not wanting to lose to rookies and sophomores.
Conversely, you have the best young players in the league competing hard and rising to the challenge of trying to knock off an All-Star team on a big stage. Just think about the likes of Brandon Miller, Amen Thompson, Dereck Lively II, Jared McCain, Stephon Castle, Dalton Knecht, Zaccharie Risacher and Zach Edey going up against All-Stars. (And perhaps Victor Wembanyama, too, but he’ll more than likely make the All-Star team.)
Whether or not the young stars can actually compete with the big boys doesn’t matter because it’ll be an entertaining watch regardless. And if one of the Rising Stars teams happens to make it to the finals, even better. But if they don’t, with a target score of 40, it’ll be a quick race to the finish between two All-Star teams.
In his report, Charania stated that the final game would have a 25-point target score. Given that we’re living in the three-point age, this seems a tad low. Twenty-five points would take all of five minutes to reach. A target score of 40 offers a bit of a longer runway, but short enough that it’s still a sprint.
But would this actually work?
It’s hard to know unless we actually see it in practice. But given the embarrassment that the NBA’s best players would face by losing to first- and second-year players, I believe it’s the motivation that these All-Stars need to give it their all.
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