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The NBA All-Star game could be in danger: heading to a USA vs International Players format or heading towards deeper changes?
NBASunday, 24 March 2024 at 18:31
The NBA All-Star game has been for a long time a special opportunity for fans to watch the best of the best going at each other as the culmination of a very exciting weekend full of different kinds of basketball-related events. However, the last editions of the game fail at entertaining the audience. The lack of competitiveness and the players' intention to stay safe from injuries have led to the league's commissioner, Adam Silver, to re-think the nature of the event and come up with a new, more thrilling challenge.
With the last edition of the All-Star weekend, the NBA front office appears to have had enough with this version of the final event, the All-Star game. With both teams playing no defense at all, the ratings around the world plummited and the fans expressed their complaints on social media.
What once was a unique chance to see the East vs the West competing with almost everything they got (at least in the fourth quarter), have now became almost a waste of time to watch. Of course, with the amount of talent reunited, the skills that players showcased on the court, such as really deep threes or incredible dunks are not to take for granted. But the thing is that if nobody is at least trying to stop the opponents, the game just lacks of a desire to win. Fear of injuries, players tired and wanting to relax from an exhausting regular season, all of that influenced the drop in the game's overall intrigue.
In order to give fans what they want, Adam Silver have never been affraid of making some changes, and regarding this specific subject, the commissioner shared some valuable insights:
"I think our feeling going into Indiana for the All-Star game this year, was: 'We have one more opportunity to go, in essence, back to basketball. Larry Bird was sort of our honorary captain. You think of basketball, Larry Bird, Indiana. We went back to the old East vs West format. We went back to the 48 min game. We talked to the players before the game and, I think fans had fun. It was a great weekend, but it wasn't a basketball game."
"Had I not seen what happened this year, I think we were ready to do US vs International. I'm just wondering now, that's a good conversation to have. Wether this generation of players, and the teams are complicit too. Nobody wants them to play hard at the All-Star game, nobody wants them to get hurt. They see it as a mid-season break," said Silver.
With the amount of success that the "Stephen Curry vs Sabrina Ionescu" shootout had, Silver concluded:
"Maybe, as opposed to trying a super competitive game basketball game, which I'm not sure that the teams and the players really want that moment. We should just be looking to do different things, and just make it a celebration of basketball. We're going to look at US vs International, I just think maybe we're past that point where we're going to play a truly competitive game."
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