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Another NBA All-Star Game has come and gone and another format change by the league seems to have passed with little improvement. Sunday night's four-team format was a dud for the most part, with not a lot of basketball being played over the course of the evening.
Fans, pundits and Draymond Green all didn't like the new format, which of course sparked plenty of discussion about what the league could do with the game moving forward. Bucks star Damian Lillard, who was apart of the winning Shaq's OGs team on Sunday night, has some ideas to raise the stakes according to Rachel Nichols.
“Dame Lillard wants to go back to an East-West All-Star game, says [he'd] be fine with home court in the Finals being on the line,” Nichols wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Alternately, he says if this format stays, maybe an ‘all Snub' team would be better as the 4th team instead of the Rising Stars.”
The inclusion of the Rising Stars was one of the controversial aspects of the new format. The selected All-Stars were split into three teams and the winning Rising Stars team from Friday night's event was included as the fourth team in the All-Star bracket. Many people did not like this, even though the youngsters played hard and were pretty competitive against the best of the best.
The effort level was a little bit better on Sunday night than it has been in some of the past years with a more traditional game, but it was far from a real game. That wasn't necessarily the issue with the format though. Depending on who you ask, there was between 30 and 35 minutes of basketball played in a three-hour broadcast. That's less than three quarters! Watching the game felt like attending a social event with some basketball sprinkled in here and there.
Raising the stakes of the game is one way to get some players to care a little bit more, but the NBA could also experiment with some sort of nationality tie-in. Look at what the NHL has done with the 4 Nations Face-Off, which has been a raging success. If Adam Silver wants to try a Team USA vs. Team World type of game, the intensity of the NBA All-Star Game could ratchet up in a hurry.
