NBA commissioner Adam Silver hints All-Star game will have new format

USA Today

2 days ago

NBA commissioner Adam Silver hints All-Star game will have new format
Unless something unexpected happens, the Los Angeles Lakers should have two All-Stars next year in LeBron James and Luka Doncic when the NBA All-Star Game takes place in Los Angeles at Intuit Dome, the new home of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Interest in the NBA All-Star Game has plunged in recent years, and just about everyone agrees that it needs to be fixed, as there has been a startling lack of competitiveness. The league changed the format this season to consist of four teams, one of which was a team of rising stars, but it didn't seem to work too well.
League commissioner Adam Silver went on FS1's "Breakfast Ball" on Wednesday and strongly suggested that the 2026 midseason classic will institute some form of a "USA vs the World" format.
"So next year, as part of our new media deal, the All-Star Game returns to NBC where it was when we were younger," Silver said. "And it so happens that, next season will be smack in middle of the Winter Olympics. So the game will be on NBC and the very day we're on, the lead-in will be Winter Olympic events and then coming out of the All-Star Game, which is now gonna be in the afternoon instead of the evening, there'll be more Olympic events, so what better time to feature some form of USA against the world. I'm not exactly sure what the format will be yet. I obviously paid a lot of attention to what the NHL did which was a huge success."
This type of format is something the NHL has used in its All-Star game, first in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This year, it featured a "4 Nations Face-Off" format, where Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United States competed.
There are so many NBA players, not just the run-of-the-mill variety but also legitimate superstars, from foreign countries, that this setup could work well. In each of the last seven seasons, the NBA's regular-season MVP has been awarded to a foreign-born player, and this year, it went to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who spent most of his childhood in the Canadian province of Ontario.