As soon as this year’s All- Star Game ended, the new competition format designed to save ratings immediately attracted a lot of criticism. Draymond Green, who appeared on TNT’s live show, was the first to criticize the league without hesitation and gave it a “0” score. Many players offered suggestions, and there was constant criticism online. This compilation of statements and criticisms from all sides also allows us to think about the nature and future of the All-Star Game.
This year’s All-Star Game abolished the long-standing tradition of two-team confrontation and instead adopted a tournament format. The rookie competition was held last Friday in the United States. Four teams, including the G League team, will fight to select a winner and advance. On the main day, they will compete with the other three All-Star teams in a single-elimination tournament with a total of three games. The first team to score 40 points will win the final winner.
First of all, Green’s criticism was directed at the competition system. He thought that they had worked so hard to be selected as All-Stars and to play on the glorious game day, but now a mere rookie player (who might even have been a G League player) can play? “It’s like putting the Olympic team against the U19 national team,” Green said.
He also criticized the updated competition system, which ends each game as long as 40 points are scored. This is not fair to the players who play seriously on the court because they lose the possibility of chasing the 48-minute All-Star Game record of past senior stars. In summary, he gave this All-Star Game the most thoroughly derogatory “0 points”.
Putting aside the Warriors veteran’s emotional condemnation of the rookies, his opinion that the major changes to the competition system are unable to connect with the glorious traditions of the past and sacrifice the inheritance of nostalgia does make sense. Bucks’ Damian Lillard did not have a rebound format, but proposed another similar but more meaningful team formation alternative: the “All-Star Leftovers” lineup.
In addition to avoiding disputes over rookie eligibility, Lillard’s focus should also be on seeing if he can stimulate a stronger sense of competition on the court through the inner motivation of the missed players.
But at the same time, in terms of “game intensity”, which is also the main reason why the league changed the competition system this year, hoping to stimulate the seriousness of the players on the field through the championship, Lillard gave some affirmation, saying that this year’s competition is better than in previous years; Durant (Kevin Durant) also agreed with this point, “I think tonight’s performance was excellent, much better than before.”
The crux of the problem that led to so many negative reviews for this tournament may not be the competition system itself, but the influence of other factors? For example, if the 40-points-first system is used, will it result in the game time being too short, and is it necessary to adjust the winning threshold? In fact, according to statistics, the three championship games only lasted 10:07, 12:54 and 10:40 respectively, which is less than 48 minutes in total (only 33 minutes and 41 seconds). This resulted in both teams in the three games just getting into the game, and each player did not have much playing time and ball possession before the game was about to end.
The intensity of the game is one thing, but such a length may compress even the show time, which originally had insufficient competition but was still highly watchable. As for the final game, apart from Stephen Curry’s “Logo Shot”, Victor Wembanyama’s blocking show, and the one-on-one duel between Kyrie Irving and Wembanyama, there was indeed a lack of highlights.
Just when the whole audience was expecting the host Curry to end the game himself, the final shot was ended by Jayson Tatum with an ordinary layup, and he also scored a team-high 15 points. Even Curry’s “second All-Star Game MVP” script for the host Warriors seemed to have a bit of a host advantage.
On the other hand, if the score gap is widened at the beginning of the game, the subsequent interest will be dull. This is why the tournament itself was fine in the first two preliminaries, but the evaluation of the last game suddenly caused a collapse.
Although the game time was insufficient, the entire All-Star Game was still quite long because it was interspersed with various commercial activities and gags lasting 2 hours and 26 minutes.
Kevin Hart’s joke received polarized reviews, but regardless, his appearance time was criticized to be longer than that of the final All-Star Game MVP Curry, completely blurring the focus on basketball; the embarrassing “mid-court three-pointer bonus of $100,000” event between the well-known money-spending YouTuber “Mr. Beast” and Lillard also attracted criticism for being too money-conscious and overly commercial.
In addition, as a commemorative event for TNT’s last All-Star Game broadcast, the TNT anchors’ funny talk show at halftime of the finals, which lasted longer than the game time, was so distracting that it not only undermined the seriousness of the main competition, but also affected the rhythm of the finalists.
Not only did several players express their discomfort with the constant interruptions of the game, Celtics’ Jaylen Brown bluntly stated, “If you want the players to play more competitively and harder, then stopping in this way is not an ideal option.”
Although we can understand that in this era of traffic and entertainment, the league wants to attract more eyeballs by adding more popular internet celebrities and variety shows, but the proportion of disorder this time does need to be deeply reviewed; if these trivial and time-wasting unnecessary interferences can be reduced, and the winning points, game length and team selection mechanism can be adjusted appropriately, perhaps the new competition system can still open another window for the increasingly boring All-Star Game.
But in the end, perhaps the competition system is still not the real problem, but how to give other players and coaching staff the motivation and desire to compete seriously off the court? In the final, the “Xia Ke Team” opened up an early 11-0 lead, but Charles Barkley’s international team never called a timeout and did not make any arrangements to win.
The international team, which showed an amazing height advantage in the preliminaries with players like Wimpanyama, Nikola Jokic and Karl-Anthony Towns, seemed to know what was going on in the finals and wanted to leave the victory to the “Xia Ke Team” led by host Curry. This gave people a sense of deliberate abandonment of their advantage under the basket, further making the game ugly and also dragging down the impression of the modified game content in the first two games, which were originally quite good.
What’s more, we can even discuss that although some players have given positive comments, is it really because the new competition system has brought about an improvement in the competitiveness of the game? Based on my actual viewing experience, in the two preliminary games, Wenbanyama played seriously, blocked shots seriously, and the opponents counterattacked. The stars did not want to lose to rookies after all. This kind of leadership, plus a little face factor, was the deep reason why the first two games were slightly better than in previous years.
But in the final game, the motivation to play seriously declined, and Wimbaya, who did not start, could not turn the tide single-handedly. The game once again fell into a large number of three-pointers and a defense that was just like a roadblock. Of course, it was an ugly comeback.
From the league’s perspective, we cannot simply bet the excitement of the game on the players’ subjective seriousness, so in the end we have to go back to the old topic: how to create incentives? As for the prize money, the total amount this year has reached 1.8 million US dollars. The final winner in 2025 will receive 125,000 US dollars each, while in 2017 it was only 50,000 US dollars. However, for the captains of each team, this is still not enough to impress them.
Lillard proposed restoring the Eastern and Western conference system, with the winner taking home-court advantage for the championship, but the stars of the weaker teams still have no reason to play hard for the playoff interests of the stronger teams in the conference. Antetokounmpo suggested using the national face battle between the United States and the international team to boost popularity, but this is still a big question mark after this year. In this final, the international team is still clearly unwilling to use its overwhelming penalty area advantage to defeat the United States. So, will returning from a 40-point tournament system to a 48-minute two-team decider really strengthen the desire to defeat the United States?
Various suggestions and proposals have emerged one after another, but so far there seems to be no sure-fire way to win. We can only continue to take the overall route of multi-faceted optimization and adjustment to see if we can piece together a better plan. This also makes most people pessimistically expect that at this time next year, the cycle of “Reviewing the All-Star Game” will be repeated again.
But unless it is resolutely abolished, the league will have to continue to brainstorm and revitalize the event. After all, this annual big worship is still a place of business opportunities and a place where many players’ career halos are added. Something is still better than nothing. Even if it is ugly, it is still better than nothing, isn’t it?
