Last year’s NBA All-Star game became infamous for lack of effort and defense. These problems aren’t new; despite a few great moments along the way, the All-Star game hasn’t been competitive for the better part of 25 years. The weekend has also seemed to lose much of its appeal. As a result, Adam Silver and the NBA added new rules in hopes of making the weekend more meaningful. This included reverting to the traditional East-West format and emphasizing the importance of competition. However, these efforts fell short; notably, Silver seemed upset in the post-game ceremony, and the All-Star weekend needs to change. Let’s break down NBA All-Star weekend’s problems and potential fixes.
New ESPN story: Adam Silver spent months stressing how Sunday’s All-Star Game needed to be better than last year. Saturday, he declared it would be.
But it turned out Silver was wrong — and his frustration was plain to see postgame.
So, what now?https://t.co/j3N9U5Wp5R
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) February 19, 2024
How to Fix NBA All-Star Weekend
Problems With the All-Star Game
The All-Star game is the weekend’s main event, but also the most flawed. The game has turned into a pickup-style, no-effort three-point fest. This year’s game was the highest-scoring in history with 397 points, and the East scored 211 points to become the first team to reach 200 or more. The teams also combined for a record 168 three-point attempts. Last year, the majority of top-end stars barely played.
Similarly, this year, the game was dominated by high-level yet non-superstar-level stars. This included Damian Lillard, who won All-Star game MVP, Karl-Anthony Towns, Jaylen Brown, and Tyrese Haliburton. Many stars haven’t cared about the All-Star game for years, which makes sense. Why risk an injury for a meaningless game? Anthony Edwards spoke about this after the All-Star game, wondering if a realistic solution exists to make the game competitive.
Anthony Edwards says the All-Star game is considered a 'break' and is not viewed as competitive
“For me, it’s an All-Star Game, so I don’t think I will ever look at it like being super competitive. It’s always fun. I don’t know what they can do to make it more competitive. It’s… pic.twitter.com/aWwkuye601
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) February 19, 2024
New Formats and Ideas
The last competitive All-Star game was in 2020. It was the first year the NBA had target scores, and the game was just weeks after Kobe Bryant’s passing, making the game more meaningful. Adding regular tweaks, such as target scores, feels like the best way to keep the game exciting and relevant. While going back to the East-West format didn’t work out this year, the idea of constant experimentation is ultimately good. Some fun future tweaks could be a mini-tournament similar to the Rising Stars game or a USA vs World game. The NBA can’t realistically change the format each year, but adding some tweaks or changing the format every few seasons would make the game more exciting and possibly competitive.
More Player Incentive
Another area of improvement would be more incentives. The bonus for winning the All-Star game is $100,000, not enough to motivate players on $30-50 million deals. The All-Star game also gives the winning team a sizable charity donation, which is great but doesn’t make the players care more. Increasing the cash incentive to the winning team and adding performance-based incentives would help make the game more competitive. The In-Season Tournament showed the impact of a financial incentive even for superstar-level players.
Another idea that’s been floated around is giving the winning conference home-court advantage in the NBA Finals. This may be too extreme, especially considering the scenario where a much worse team earns home-court advantage. However, I like the direction of this idea. Ultimately, some reward or incentive feels necessary to make the game more competitive.
The Success of the 3-Point Contest
Before discussing issues with the other two events, let’s briefly discuss the success of the three-point contest. Seeing eight of the league’s best shooters face off is always incredibly entertaining. This year, we got an excellent tiebreaker round before an intense final round where Lillard secured back-to-back wins. The Stephen Curry vs Sabrina Ionescu three-point contest was the highlight of the weekend. Both delivered incredible performances, with Curry winning by just three points in dramatic fashion. The future possibilities of NBA and WNBA three-point contests are incredibly exciting, especially with Caitlin Clark entering the WNBA soon. Ultimately, the three-point contest brings a ton of excitement to All-Star weekend each year and is often the best part.
Problems With the Dunk Contest
The dunk contest is a historically great event that has steadily declined. This year was one of the worst contests ever, despite All-Star participation from Brown. Most dunks lack creativity; at this point, it’s nearly impossible to do something unique; everything has already been done in previous contests or on social media. This lack of creativity, paired with the typical lack of star representation, has made the dunk contest decline. However, there have still been some terrific dunk contests recently, including Aaron Gordon and Derrick Jones Jr.’s showdown in 2020.
Increasingly, the $100,000 prize money would help make the dunk contest more consistently entertaining. It likely wouldn’t encourage more stars to participate, but it could increase the creativity and risk involved in the dunks. Another interesting idea would be to guarantee a standard NBA roster to any G League or two-way player who wins the contest. This is notable since Mac McClung has won the competition the past two years. Seeing McClung or a similar player get a more meaningful reward would make the contest more exciting and the final moments more emotional.
Problems With the Skills Challenge
The skills challenge has been around since 2003 and needs to go. It was fun for some years, but since switching to the three-team format, the effort and accuracy have been non-existent, with this year’s contest being at an all-time low. The NBA should consider switching to a one-on-one or three-on-three tournament instead. These ideas would be more entertaining and could create ultra-competitive tournament-style games. However, both tournaments might be far-fetched, especially considering fans have been advocating for them for years with no success. The NBA could also bring back a horse or the shooting stars challenge from previous years. Whatever they do, the skills challenge needs to be replaced.
Are All-Star Games outdated?
One argument that must be addressed is that All-Star games are outdated. With social media and the ability to watch every game, All-Star games lose much of their appeal. A decline in ratings supports this idea. As discussed earlier, social media has also negatively impacted the dunk contest. Despite these facts, I remain optimistic about the All-Star weekend. While it will never reach the same level of popularity it did in the 1980s, and defensive effort will never be prevalent, through tweaks and new ideas, the NBA can make the All-Star game exciting and keep it relevant. Most importantly, this will take a lot of buy-in from the players, but the 2020 All-Star game shows us a blueprint for getting stars to compete. Ultimately, innovation and player buy-in will determine how successful this new era of All-Star weekend will be.
