After years of wallowing in mediocre viewership, the 2025 NBA All-Star game took on a new format this year in an attempt to draw a larger audience.
Players were drafted by former professional basketball players, TNT analysts and honorary general managers Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal, with Candace Parker as an honorary general manager of the fourth team composed of the league’s best rookies. Games were played first to 40 points. In the first round, Chuck’s Global Stars beat Kenny’s Young Stars 41-32. In the following round, Shaq’s OGs beat Candace’s Rising Stars 42-35. In the final round, Shaq’s OGs routed Chuck’s Global Stars with a final score of 41-25 after Shaq’s team got off to a hot 11-0 start with the help of Stephen Curry and Jayson Tatum.
With the 2025 NBA All-Star game in the books, many questions remain as to the future of the event. Although the games were considered to be closer and more competitive than those of recent years, many felt that there were too many advertisements and events on the screen and court and not enough basketball. The mixed reactions of fans shows that the NBA’s long-standing goal to find an appealing and long-lasting format for the All-Star game is not yet complete.
This year’s change in the All-Star game was brought about as a direct response to the poor performance of players in last year’s game. The 2024 All-Star game was a return to the traditional East vs. West matchup, where the ending score combined to nearly 400 points of total offense. After the lack of defensive effort and general malaise of the players, the league’s management and players felt something needed to be done.
“We needed to change,” said eleven-time All-Star selection from the Golden State Warriors, Stephen Curry. “We needed some new life, new juice in the game — something kind of unexpected […]. The way people consume basketball is different. It’s not going to look like it used to. But it can still be fun for everybody.”
Curry was part of the committee of players and management put together by the NBA to find a solution to the degradation of the classic event. The result, however, was less than a consensus among fans, commentators and players. With the inclusion of the Rookie Stars Challenge, abandonment of the traditional four-quarter game, and long breaks in between games, there was a lot of fuel for criticism.
Some players only had mild criticisms of the event, like Jayson Tatum, six-time All-Star selection for the Boston Celtics.
“I think the toughest part [was when] they stopped the game to do the presentation while we were kind of halfway through [the game],” Tatum said. “It was kind of tough to get back into the game after that.”
Tatum was referring to a ceremony celebrating TNT’s 40-year relationship with the NBA, which may be coming to an end. This was just one of many stoppages and delays that drew criticism.
Other critics were not as conservative. Draymond Green, power forward for the Golden State Warriors, was adamant and explicit about his dislike of the new changes. He specifically targeted the inclusion of the Rookie Stars Challenge winners and the new first-to-forty-point system.
“You work all year to be an All-Star, and you get to play up to 40 [points], and you’re done,” Green said. “This is so unfair to Victor Wembanyama, who just took this game really seriously, [and] Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who just took this game really seriously. When you talk about chasing after the points records, Melo and Kobe and all these guys, who have had great scoring nights, [players] don’t get the opportunity to do that with this game — all so we can watch some Rising Stars. We’re about to watch the Olympic team, now we get the treat of watching the Olympic team play against a U-19 team. Come one, what are we doing? This is ridiculous.”
Others, such as Charles Barkley, saw the revisions to the game as necessary for players to take the game seriously. One of the possible reasons, as Barkley indicates, for the inclusion of a rookie team is to incentivize the older and more established players to play defense, so as not to be embarrassed on a national stage.
“The All-Star game is a guilty sports pleasure of mine,” said sports radio talk show host Danny Parkins on the Colin Cowherd Podcast, days after the event. “There was a social contract that existed between the players and the fans. We did not expect high-level basketball for four quarters […], but there was a social contract that basically said ‘keep it close and give us twelve minutes of basketball at the end.’ Somewhere along the way that social contract was broken.”
In this light, the recent additions and manipulations to the NBA All-Star game can be viewed as an attempt by the administration and players to re-establish the “social contract” that made the All-Star game a spectacle to watch, and not an attempt to merely keep up appearances and aesthetics. However, many unanswered questions still remain and it will be fascinating to see what the NBA does with the criticism it has received.
