NBA announces revamped All-Star tournament format for 2025

Yesterday at 03:15 PM

By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer

LAS VEGAS — 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.

It will 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."

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.

Lakers star LeBron James served as one of the captains all six times, with Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo the other captain three times, Kevin Durant twice and the Warriors' Steph 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 the last jersey number worn by late Lakers icon Kobe Bryant.

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 will 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.

REACTION

The NBA's hope is simply this: By getting players to compete even a little bit more, the product will be more compelling, and more people will watch. Ratings have plummeted in recent years, viewers evidently not loving the constant stream of lobs, 3-pointers, dunks and zero defense.

"I understand what's being attempted," Lillard said. "You want to create some type of competitiveness in that game on Sunday. You want to try to mix it up to try to find a way to make it more entertaining. We'll see."

The new format largely mirrors the one used for the Rising Stars games since 2022. For Rising Stars, the NBA brings the best rookies and sophomores to All-Star weekend and splits them into four teams. There are two semifinal games – the first team to 50 points was the winner in Year 1, the first team to 40 points has been the winner of the semifinals in 2023 and 2024. And the semifinal winners meet in a championship game that same night, first to 25 points winning.

"If I get a chance to go, obviously it's a blessing," Gilgeous-Alexander said. "I support whatever they do because it's an honor to be there."

What the league wants, yet again, is just a little more competition.

"One side of me is like, why? Why change it? But I think just like this NBA Cup, there's some incentive in there for people to get after it earlier in the season and try to get something done," Lillard added. "So, I think that's a possible route for that, as well. We'll see. I know they switched it up a little bit this year, and we'll see how it goes."