NBA All-Star Tournament: 4 Teams, 3 Games, 1 Night

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The NBA ‘s All-Star Game will be an All-Star tournament this season, with the league announcing Tuesday that it has ended plans to use a different format for the upcoming midseason showcase in San Francisco.

And the score will definitely be down – way, way, way down.

This season’s format is a four-team, three-game, one-night tournament, three teams with eight All-Stars each, and the fourth team being the winner of the Rising Stars challenge for first- and second-year players. The winning team in all matches will be the first to score 40 points.

It will happen on February 16 at home to the Golden State Warriors. The Rising Stars event is there on February 14, headlined by All-Star Friday.

“I think we’ve come to a consensus that modern All-Stars are partly about competition, but ultimately they’re about entertaining the fans and creating a powerful experience for them,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday .

Silver has wanted a more competitive All-Star event for some time, and this change comes after the teams combined to score a record 397 points — 211-186 was the final — in last season’s game at Indianapolis.

The teams combined for 289 shot attempts in last year’s game, 94% of which were either inside the paint or beyond the 3-point line.

“Obviously, when the elephant in the room is us competing, it’s expected and makes sense that they try to shake things up,” said Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a likely All-Star selection in this season for the third time. “At the end of the day it’s going to come down to whether the players want to go for it and I’d love to see that. Love to be a part of it and hopefully it happens.”

There have been other shakeups in the All-Star format in recent years. After the first 66 All-Star Games were largely played as a regular game—Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference, four quarters, 12 minutes each—the league switched to a format in which the leading vote-getters from each conference served as captains, getting to prepare their team.

LeBron James served as one of the captains all six times, with Giannis Antetokounmpo the other captain three times, Kevin Durant twice and Stephen Curry once.

For four years of the captain’s choice, the All-Star Games used a goal score at the end of games, ensuring that the winner was decided on a made shot. The fourth quarter was a timeout, and the winner was the first team to reach whatever the leading team’s score was after three quarters, plus 24 points — the 24 being a nod to Kobe Bryant’s final jersey number.

It went back to East vs. west format last year and saw a record high in points with Luka Doncic attempting a 70-foot jumper, Donovan Mitchell throwing a 50-foot underhand pass, Bam Adebayo getting the ball to himself by throwing it. off Nikola Jokic’s backhand, Tyrese Haliburton attempting five 3-pointers in 92 seconds, and Damian Lillard ending the night with a 44-foot jumper — which wasn’t even his longest shot of the game.

“I think something could be done about it,” Lillard said after his MVP-winning performance in last year’s game. “I’m not sure what, but I think there’s a way to make it a more competitive game.”

The league, which partnered with the National Basketball Players Association on this new format, hopes it has found the answer.

“We went back to the drawing board with the players’ association, and again spoke directly to the players and said, ‘Let’s come up with a format that we think has a better chance of creating a game, or in this case, a series of competitions that will be interesting for the fans,” Silver said. “So this is where we came out.”

Voting format

All-Star voting begins Thursday, and the format is unchanged.

Fans – who can vote through January 20 – can vote daily for three forwards and two backs from both conferences.

It will be part of a weighted formula – 50% fan vote, 25% media panel vote, 25% current player vote – to determine the 10 players who will be designated as “starters.”

NBA head coaches will select the 14 players designated as “reserves”.

But the starting and reserve columns will not matter much on game night, as there will be 15 different players starting – naturally five from each of the three teams – and only nine players coming off the bench in these semi-final games.

How the teams are selected

TNT analysts Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith will draft teams from the 24-man All-Star pool on February 6. The teams will carry their names – Team Shaq, Team Charles and Team Kenny.

The winner of the Rising Stars going to the All-Star tournament is called Team Candace, for Candace Parker.

Coaching staff

The coaching staffs from the teams with the best records in the Eastern and Western Conferences will go to the All-Star Game. (It can’t be the Milwaukee or Minnesota coaching staffs this year since they coached last year.)

The East and West head coaches each coach their own teams in the tournament; an assistant coach from each staff will serve as the head coach for the other two teams in the All-Star Tournament.

Prize money

There is a $1.8 million prize pool for the All-Star Game.

Each player on the All-Star champion team will receive $125,000, each runner-up will receive $50,000, and the players on the teams eliminated in the semifinals will each receive $25,000.

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