LAS VEGAS, December 25 ------ The NBA ‘s All-Star Game is going to be an All-Star tournament this season, with the league announcing that it has finalized plans to use a different format for the upcoming midseason showcase in San Francisco. And scoring is sure to be down — way, way, way down.
This season’s format is a four-team, three-game, one-night tournament, three teams of eight All-Stars apiece and the fourth team being the winner of the Rising Stars challenge for first- and second-year players. The winning team in all games will be the first to score 40 points. It’ll happen Feb. 16 at the home of the Golden State Warriors. The Rising Stars event is there Feb. 14, headlining All-Star Friday. “I think we’ve come to terms that modern All-Stars are in part about competition, but ultimately they’re about entertaining the fans and creating a strong experience for them,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday.
Silver has wanted a more competitive All-Star event for some time, and this change comes after the teams combined to score a record 397 points — 211-186 was the final — in last season’s game at Indianapolis. The teams combined to take 289 shot attempts in last year’s game, 94% of those being either inside the paint or beyond the 3-point line. “Obviously, with the elephant in the room being us competing, them trying to shake things up is expected and makes sense,” said Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a likely All-Star selection this season for the third time. “At the end of the day, it’s going to come down to whether the players want to go at it, and I would love to see that. Love to be a part of that for sure, and hopefully it happens.”
There have been other All-Star format shakeups in recent years. After the first 66 All-Star Games were basically played like a normal game — Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference, four quarters, 12 minutes apiece — the league switched to a format where the leading vote-getters from each conference served as captains who got to draft their teams. LeBron James served as one of the captains all six times, with Giannis Antetokounmpo the other captain three times, Kevin Durant twice and Stephen Curry once.
In four of the captain’s-pick years, All-Star Games used a target score at the end of games, ensuring that the winner was decided on a made shot. Fourth quarters were untimed and the winner was the first team to reach whatever the leading team’s score was after three quarters, plus 24 points — the 24 being a nod to Kobe Bryant’s last jersey number. It went back to the East vs. West format last year and saw a record point total along with Luka Doncic trying a 70-foot jumper, Donovan Mitchell throwing a 50-foot underhand inbounds pass, Bam Adebayo inbounding the ball to himself by tossing it off Nikola Jokic’s backside, Tyrese Haliburton trying and making five 3-pointers in a 92-second span, and Damian Lillard capping the night with a 44-foot jumper — which wasn’t even his longest shot of the game. “I think something could be done about it,” Lillard said after his MVP-winning performance in last year’s game. “I’m not sure what, but I think there’s a way to make it a more competitive game.”
The league, which worked with the National Basketball Players Association on this new format, hopes it has found the answer. “We went back to the drawing board with the players association, and again talking directly to players and said, ‘Let’s come up with a format that we think has a better chance of creating a game, or in this case a series of competitions that will be of interest to the fans,’ ” Silver said. “So, this is where we came out.”
Source: inquirer.net
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