The NBA Should Get Rid of the All-Star Game

What's made it unwatchable is not something the league can fix

Hope everyone here stateside had a great holiday.

This year — among many other things of far greater importance (hi, Laura! I know you just scan for your name in these) — I’m thankful that the NBA is at least trying to fix the All-Star Game.

They can see there’s a problem here, and more than paying lip service, the league seems to be making genuine good-faith attempts to get that showcase to be… something worth showing.

Bravo, kudos. I do appreciate that. I try not to advocate for defeatism where it can be avoided, and it’s generally good to believe you can change something when you get down to trying. That’s best practice, for sure, even admirable in a way.

But here, warmly nestled in my Friday morning quarterback (point guard?) armchair, I can say stuff like this.

Just get rid of it. She’s not worth it, man. Let her go.

The All-Star Game, such as it was, is already gone. It’s been reimagined to death. I don’t even dislike stuff like the Elam Ending, or captains drafting the teams, or this new 4-team pickup-style format they’re trying this year. All fun! So fun.

Or they would be fun, if anyone playing cared.

See, that comes through. We can tell that no’s engaged, even without looking at last year’s score: a cool 211-186 (ft. 168 three-point shot attempts) win for the East. Congrats, guys.

That was the laughable result that brought commissioner Adam Silver back to the drawing board. And this is what he came up with, per ESPN:

The NBA's new four-team tournament-style format for the 2025 All-Star Game is expected to have two semifinal games played up to 40 points, with the winners advancing to the final match up to 25 points, sources told ESPN.

The first-of-its-kind event is expected to serve as a quick-burst competition that resembles pickup games where the winner moves to the championship round in single-elimination play.

Sources told ESPN last week that the NBA was in serious discussions to have three All-Star teams of eight players each and the winner of the Rising Stars game take part in an All-Star Game tournament.

Now, I myself think that sounds better than last year. I don’t know anyone who wants to watch whatever that was, and I don’t think I know anyone outside of NBA writers who did.

Narrowing the margin seems like a smart move. Shorter bursts sound good to me. Maybe that brings out a little more intensity? One can hope.

My thing is, while I’d like to believe we could legislate around this, I’m pretty sure that any change to the format is bound to have a negligible effect.

The players just don’t care, and I don’t know if we’re going to get back to a place, culturally, where they would.

And if that sounds like an overstatement — check out Mr. Cultural Critic here, invoking ‘culture’ — let me assure you. This is, in fact, culture at issue.

Why? Because I can’t entirely blame players for not taking this seriously. It’s not purely their fault. It still is in large part, and I don’t forgive the total disregard they’ve shown the last few years, but this is structural too.

Every part of, yes, our sports culture, is telling the players that their livelihood is based on their health and their legacy is based on their success in the postseason. The entire regular season has become this kind of farcical warmup exercise, punctuated by load management, a slog that teams just hope to get through — uninjured — so the real job can begin.

Guys play hard during the year. I don’t mean to discount that. But they don’t play as hard, for obvious reasons, as this sort of silent rebellion against the 82-game season — maybe not so silent — marches on.

The rules are simple. Don’t get hurt, so you can show up when it counts. That’s the bottom line.

So in that sense, this directly relates to last week’s piece about the NFL, where this same phenomenon is actually less pronounced. When the only thing that matters is the playoffs, and even regular seasons with actual stakes are devalued, what do you think is going to happen to a meaningless showcase game in the middle of the year, right when everyone who isn’t playing gets a mid-season break?

I said earlier that the All-Star Game has been reimagined to death, which is generous. It was dead long before any of those changes. The most notable thing about the All-Star Game these days is that it gives writers like me something to opine about. No one cares, least of all the players.

Keep some stuff about the weekend. The three-point contest was kinda fun last year. The dunk contest is hit-or-miss these days, but it can still be good in ways that the game itself can’t. Keep coming up with other ones, maybe?

Is more programming even a good thing here? I don’t know. The league’s always going to have an incentive to televise something, so hey. Fill the airtime. They should be able to figure that out.

Just don’t fill it with an All-Star Game. If you ever cared about the All-Star Game, then you’d know. It’s time to let her go.

🦃 I’ll keep the postscript nice and short this week, what with the holiday. Another thing that I’m very thankful for this year is everyone who’s reading this. This newsletter quite literally only goes out to you. You’re why I do this, and I hope you get as much out of it as I do. Means a lot to have you aboard. Happy holidays!