The new NBA All-Star Game format is a weird disaster

What happened to the (All-Star) game I love?

Let’s say the Lego Company wants to re-release an old Death Star Lego. It’s an iconic set, but some pieces have been recalled because too many kids ate them, others aren’t even in production anymore, and the general construction of the whole thing hasn’t aged well. Oh, and the instructions might be too difficult to follow for today’s generation of kids. It’s cool in theory, but an unwieldy relic in the real world. How would they go about fixing that?

A rational company would choose one of three options: refurbish it, ignore it or abandon it. The best option would be to replace the forbidden or incompatible pieces, and re-design it so it’s up to today’s standards. Otherwise, just re-release it as is or abandon the project altogether.

Now let’s say that Death Star Lego set is actually the NBA All-Star Game, and instead of choosing one of the rational options, the NBA has decided to Gronk-spike the concept into the hardwood, rebuild all the pieces into the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek and slap on a bright pink label that says “DEATH STAR” and ship it out for sale.

On Thursday, ESPN reported that the 2025 All-Star Game would feature a brand-new, “pick-up inspired” tournament format where four teams of eight players compete to win the whole thing. The semifinals will be first to 40, while the final will be first to 25. According to Shams Charania, this “fresh and creative” concept gained momentum among league officials, coaches, players and executives in the past six months.

Sigh.

This is definitely “fresh and creative,” in the same way Francis Ford Coppola’s experimental disasterclass “Megalopolis” was. Sure, the NBA has crafted something innovative, but they are confusing “change” with “progress.” And in doing so, have mortally wounded the last remnants of the All-Star Game, which died Thursday morning, sad and alone, at the age of 73.

The new style is as incoherent as it is an affront to the game’s history. Why does the semifinal’s score go higher than the final? Is the final not more important? Are the winners of the tournament some sort of special level of All-Star? Are we going to have “All-Star Champions” in addition to normal All-Stars?

The tournament style is an attempt to force competitiveness by adding contrived elimination. But the players don’t try because they don’t want to get hurt, not because they don’t care. In some ways, they stopped trying in the old All-Star game because ringzzz culture made them too competitive… about only the NBA championship and nothing else. They have hundreds of millions of dollars and their basketball legacy riding on their health, and a tournament isn’t going to fix the lack of care that Adam Silver previously decried.

But the NBA has repeatedly misunderstood their assignment with the All-Star Game. It’s not supposed to be competitive. It’s not supposed to matter. It’s just supposed to be a game.

The All-Star Game was a relic of a time when East-West rivalries were more pronounced, when players didn’t leave in free agency or demand trades with three years left on their contracts. It was arguably designed for fewer teams and for when positions mattered more. In its current state, it’s basically just an accolade to list on Wikipedia and Basketball Reference so that you can go “oh look, Chris Kaman was a 2010 All-Star!”

But fundamentally, the game serves a fantasy that every NBA fan, particularly the younger ones, has deep down: what if all the best players played together? What would that look like? Now, the NBA has removed that fantasy and split everybody up. It’s no longer all the best players in one game, it’s one-fourth of the best players playing a different fourth of the best players in three different, shorter games.

Complexity is the enemy of improvement. The NBA is hoping to trigger players’ latent competitiveness by adding a bracket — like they did with the NBA Cup — while also satisfying the disparate interests with a financial stake in the game: owners, sponsors, and broadcasting partners. This shiny, new idea carries the golden prospect of revenue, but destroyed what made the game special.

Maybe the reality is just simpler: The NBA knows it can’t fix the All-Star Game, so instead of allowing it to serve its noble purpose — being a cool-looking showcase of a game with all the best players — they will continue mangling until it’s the “Brick-by-Brick All-Star Game presented by Lego” with LeBron James and Jayson Tatum competing for who can build the Ultimate Collectors Edition RD-D2 the fastest.

It’ll certainly be sponsorable, but it won’t be an All-Star Game. Neither will this new version.