NBA commissioner Adam Silver is planning to make some major additional overhauls to the All-Star Game’s format.
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NBA commissioner Adam Silver
Silver spoke with reporters on Thursday about the NBA‘s plans for its new European league, and also alluded to his intentions for upgrading the All-Star Game, per Joe Vardon, Adam Crafton, and Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic and Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press.
According to Brett Siegel of ClutchPoints, the longtime league commissioner is at least aware that the convoluted All-Star elimination-game format he employed during this season’s All-Star Game was unsuccessful as appointment television.
Adam Silver says that the NBA All-Star Game will continue to be evaluated and they will continue to explore changes.
As far as this season’s All-Star Game, Silver says it was a “swing and a miss.”
“It didn’t work. We are back to the drawing board.”
— Brett Siegel (@BrettSiegelNBA) March 27, 2025
Silver acknowledged that last month’s reformatted All-Star Game in San Francisco was a “swing and a miss.”
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The NBA has tried all kinds of out-of-the-box attempts to revive the All-Star Game itself, which has devolved into now being a glorified scrimmage, wherein no one plays defense and players jog into actions.
From the Elam Ending approach to final target scores to making the top vote recipients in the Eastern Conference and Western Conference draft their personnel, the league has struggled to find a permanent solution to All-Star player apathy.
The 2025 All-Star Game featured a tournament-style setup that, while fun, didn’t exactly refuel players’ competitive fires or excite viewership.
“It didn’t work,” Silver said, per Siegel. “We are back to the drawing board.”
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In a controversial move that may have just doubled as a scathing indictment of how he felt about the game, Los Angeles Lakers superstar power forward LeBron James revealed during All-Star Weekend that he would sit out the game and avoid his press obligations as he dealt with an injury.
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Typically, if players know they’ll be absent ahead of the contest, they alert the league, which gives Silver time to find a replacement for the game.
Silver had already been compelled to call up two injury replacements this year, in Atlanta Hawks point guard Trae Young — now a four-time honoree — and Dallas Mavericks point guard Kyrie Irving — who made his ninth All-Star team with the move.
Maybe the usefulness of even fielding an actual All-Star game has passed. Maybe players should be named All-Stars in a midseason poll, and festivities like the 3-Point Contest and Slam Dunk Contest can be reduced into one night (the Skills Challenge has never struck this reporter’s fancy). Or maybe All-Star Weekend could be shifted into being an offseason event, a fun reminder of the league’s superstars after the year’s playoffs have wrapped.
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