As expected, the NBA will experiment with a new format for this season’s All-Star Game. The league and the National Basketball Players Association have announced that instead of a single, full-length game, All-Star Sunday will feature a mini-tournament that includes four teams and three games.
Reporting last month indicated that this was the direction the NBA was headed. Now it’s official.
The voting process to determine the 24 All-Stars will remain the same, with 12 players selected from each conference. However, instead of being split up into two teams, those 24 All-Stars will be drafted onto three eight-player teams by TNT analysts and honorary “general managers” Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, and Shaquille O’Neal.
The new format will emulate the one already being used in the Rising Stars event on Friday night, and the team that wins the Rising Stars tournament will be the fourth team that competes on All-Star Sunday. TNT analyst Candace Parker will be that team’s honorary GM.
The four teams will meet in a pair of semifinal matchups, with the winner of each game advancing to the final. For each of the three contests, the winner will be the first team to reach or surpass 40 points.
Although there will now be four teams competing on All-Star Sunday, the coaches for those teams will still only come from the top club in each conference, not the top two. The No. 1 seed in the East and in the West will each send its head coach and an assistant to All-Star weekend. The head coaches will coach a team made up of All-Stars, while one assistant will coach the remaining All-Star team and the other will coach the Rising Stars team.
The NBA and NBPA have also renegotiated the prize money for the winners and losers of All-Star Sunday. The current Collective Bargaining Agreement called for players on the winning team to receive a $100K bonus and players on the losing team to earn $25K. Under the new system, players on the winning team will receive $125K, while players on the second-place team get $50K and players on the two teams that lose in the semifinals will earn $25K apiece.
This season’s All-Star weekend in San Francisco will begin on February 14, with the new tournament taking place on Feb. 16. The draft of the 24 All-Stars will occur on Feb. 6 on TNT.
The fourth team is not an all-star team?
The fourth team will be the winning team from the championship game of the Castrol Rising Stars, the annual showcase of top first- and second-year NBA players and NBA G League standouts
I’ll keep my expectation super low, but I still have a feeling it will be trash.
I don’t think it will get better until LeBron finally retires.
Yeah, stupid LeBron always messing everything up
????
He’s been the face of the league for the last 10+ years and the ratings for all-star weekend has declined tremendously during that time period. What does that tell you? There are also countless YouTube videos you can watch explaining the correlation or LeBron and all-star weekend being trash.
There are countless YouTube videos on almost any subject that are nothing but utter B.S.
I still won’t watch. All Star games are boring and uninteresting to me as an adult.
When I was a kid, the only one I watched was MLB.
I guaranteeeeee!!! No one gonna give a shiii
They wonder why ratings are down? They ruined everything cool to watch.
Regular season- 20 teams make the playoffs/play in. 10 teams basically tank. There really isnt a playoff race anymore and if there is one its between two god awful teams. First round of playoffs isn’t usually good. Play in games are alright. The NBA cup feels like an alternate reality now with colored courts and other scheduling weirdness. All star game the three point and dunk contest changes so much I have no idea what the current rules are and don’t care for all star weekend. Players are on vacation now during that time. Now introducing some format to have like 50 players compete or whatever the real number. Ohh is this guy a all star? No he is a fill in for the 5 string team. Players just complain about fans and decided we don’t matter. Well you wanted us to leave you along. We are now.
This seems like it could provide a 50% hit ratio on good quarters played…
Which is better than previous All Star games…
Interested to see how it pans out…
The rising stars team could make some noise. Assuming most of the all star selections are on big contracts, the rising stars team would benefit the most from that $125k top prize.
WTF? Is this a joke?
It’s the same format as those dodge-ball tourneys at a first-grader’s birthday party.
4 teams, choose your best friends to be on yours, every team plays 2 games, and everybody gets a nice little prize at the end. MVP vote held after to memorialize an unforgettable achievement.
Pass.
How about we modify Silvers latest wet dream.
Tthe game starts with just 2 all-stars, one from each team – 1v1, half-court.
Every 2 minutes, 2 more all-stars come out from their respective locker rooms ……. then so on, so forth. Only when it becomes 5v5 does it revert to full-court (until the 8-man team is reached).
I’d add blaring arena-style music every time all-stars appear. Makes sense that Lebron, Steph, KD, etc among the last to appear.
lol
NBA/WWE War Games.
Nice that the Rising Stars will comprise one of the teams. They might actually put forth some real effort to embarrass the All-Stars, and maybe the All-Stars will have to put in enough effort to not end up getting embarrassed. Still not a very exciting change, but it’s better than nothing. Although I’d expect the format to change again within a few years.
So will the rising stars team be named all stars?