Fixing the NBA All-Star Game | What Can Be Done to Raise the Stakes?

Discussing the 2024 NBA All-Star Game and then what can be done to improve the game in years to come.

The 2024 All-Star Game was played on Sunday, with the Eastern Conference prevailing 211-186.

Usually offensive-driven games are fun to watch, but for the most part, this year’s All-Star Game was extremely boring. The East got out to a comfortable lead and the game was never really even close for most of the final three quarters.

Very little defense was played, and the game basically turned into a 3-point shooting competition, with some dunks sprinkled in. Of the East’s 146 field goal attempts, 97 (yes, 97!) were 3-point attempts. The West “only” attempted 71 triples.

Was it cool to see Damian Lillard knock down some extremely deep triples (including two from half court)? Sure it was, but when no defensive player was within 10 feet of him (from half court or not), the 3-point shooting loses some of its aura.

Stephen Curry (of all players) blocked a dunk attempt during the game, but pretty much every other dunk was attempted with little defensive resistance. 

It’s great to see the NBA’s best players all on the same court, but if the game is basically a shootaround, what’s the point of having the All-Star Game? I won’t even get into the dunk contest and skills competition. Let’s dive into some ideas on how the NBA can make the game more competitive going forward.

Make the Game Mean Something

Adding stakes to the game could help fix things, and there’s a few ideas I’ve seen that fall under this category.

Some want the game to determine home-court advantage in the NBA Finals. So using last night’s game as the example, the East would get the home-court advantage in the NBA Finals, regardless of the records of the two teams that get there.

I personally don’t like this idea at all. Several of the players in All-Star Games every year won’t get anywhere near the Finals, so why should their efforts help out a rival team? I feel like we’d get more efforts like last night’s game if the NBA decided to use the contest to determine home-court advantage in the Finals.

Another idea I’ve seen is to add some monetary incentives. You could not only reward the winning team’s players with a nice chunk of change, but could add incentives for points, assists, rebounds, blocks, winning MVP, etc. 

This is probably one of the better ideas out there (simply because there aren’t many good ones). Money is always a good motivator, but for the stars that are making $50 million a season, is a fraction of that amount going to motivate someone to play extremely hard?

That leads me into the next idea and final one for this section. Instead of playing for personal gain, every player could pick out their favorite charity/organization, and then every penny they earn during the game would go toward a good cause. 

Hopefully that would motivate a few more players to give better effort, but I also think it’s a dangerous game to play, as then some players might get ridiculed for a poor performance. I’d also think several players sit out with “injuries” in order to avoid having to giving more effort and letting people down.

Change the Game Format

There’s a few different ideas we could throw into this section, but it’s all focused on changing the format of the actual game.

Instead of playing normal quarters and minutes, the NBA could instead play games of 21 (or whatever number you want to use). Make it so there’s 15 All-Stars from each conference and create three teams of five. The conference that wins two of the three games of 21 (or has the best point differential after the three sets of games) wins.

Maybe pride would kick in for players and they’d do their best to not lose to players they think they are clearly better then. You could even throw in monetary incentives in this format still, but the main point is to create more competition, which this would probably accomplish over a true game.

If the NBA doesn’t want to do away with an actual game, they could alter some rules to make things more competitive.

Add a line for 4- and 5-pointers. Take away points for missed shots and turnovers. Decrease the amount of time per possession (shorter shot clock). The list could go on and on, but adding in some things like this could turn a regular game into something a little more special.

What Else Could Be Done?

There’s hundreds of wild ideas out there to try and add some excitement to the All-Star Game, and I’m sure the league is going to play around with several ideas in years to come.

In the end, it comes down to the actual players having to put in effort. When they are in the middle of a season and possibly chasing down a title, there’s risk of injury in a meaningless game, which I think has led to a lot of the issues with the game. The NBA already instituted the 65-game threshold to earn various NBA honors, and the players have responded by playing more than in past years. Unless the All-Star Game has some kind of value, there’s really no reason to give 100% in the game right now.

Maybe the best idea is to scrap the game and do a bunch of basketball-related games instead. You can keep the dunk, 3-point and skills competitions, but add in 1-on-1, games of 21, horse and so on. 

Whatever the NBA decides to do, something needs to be done, because what the product was on Sunday was not it. It’s supposed to be a game in which we highlight the league’s best, but here we are a day later talking about how to fix it. That’s a big problem.

Here’s to hoping the NBA can figure out a solution.

#nba #all-star-game