The NBA's All-Star Game is going to be an All-Star tournament this season, with the league announcing on Tuesday 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.
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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.
NBA Commissioner Adam 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.”
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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 hopes it has found the answer.
Voting format
All-Star voting begins Thursday and the format is unchanged.
Fans — who can vote through Jan. 20 — can cast ballots daily for three frontcourt and two backcourt players from both conferences.
That'll be part of a weighted formula — 50% fan vote, 25% media panel vote, 25% current player vote — to determine the 10 players that will be designated as “starters.”
NBA head coaches will pick the 14 players designated as “reserves."
But the starter and reserve columns won't mean much on game night, since there will be 15 different players starting — five from each of the three teams, obviously — and only nine players coming off the bench in those semifinal games.
How the teams will be picked
TNT analysts Shaquille O'Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith will draft teams from the 24-player All-Star pool on Feb. 6. The teams will bear their names — Team Shaq, Team Charles and Team Kenny.
The Rising Stars winner that'll go to the All-Star tournament will be called Team Candace, for Candace Parker.
Coaching staffs
The coaching staffs from the teams with the best records in the Eastern and Western Conferences will go to the All-Star Game. (It cannot be the Milwaukee or Minnesota coaching staffs this year, since they coached last year.)
The East and West head coaches will each coach a team in the tournament; one assistant coach from each staff will serve as head coach for the other two teams in the All-Star tournament.
Prize money
There is a prize pool of $1.8 million for the All-Star Game.
Each player on the All-Star champion team gets $125,000, each player on the runner-up team will get $50,000 and the players on the teams eliminated in the semifinals will each get $25,000.