The NBA is, yet again, looking to change the format of the All-Star Game. This season it was a mini tournament where four teams competed in short games to 40 points to crown a winner. It did not go well. Prior to that, the league adopted a playground style format where the top All-Star vote getters from each conference got to select their own roster. It was exciting at first, but grew stale fast, especially after the league tried to have the captains select their rosters mere minutes before the game started for the sake of television ratings in 2023.
Now, the league is toying with the idea of something that many fans, media members and even some players have been lobbying for going on several years now: USA vs. World format. It’s not a particularly groundbreaking idea, but it’s the one that makes the most sense given the amount of international talent in the NBA is at an all-time high.
“Our All-Star Game will return to NBC next season in the middle of their coverage of the Winter Olympics,” league commissioner Adam Silver told The Athletic Monday. “Given the strong interest we’ve seen in international basketball competitions, most recently in last summer’s Olympics in Paris, we’re discussing concepts with the players association that focus on NBA players representing their countries or regions instead of the more traditional formats that we’ve used in the past.”
It may not be an all out USA roster vs. international roster, as president of league operations Byron Spruell said on Monday that it could be “more on a nations or regions based,” which could mean a return of the multiple All-Star rosters we saw this season. But the league is certainly going to play up that idea for next season.
“It’s not lost on us … we’ll be in L.A., the home of the ’28 Summer Olympics, and we’ll be competing in the arena at Intuit, where the basketball competition will take place in the 2028 Olympics,” Silver said. “So I think all of those factors, when they come together, it presents an enormous opportunity for us to do something with an international competition instead of the traditional All-Star formats that we’ve used.”
If there were ever a perfect time for the league to adopt a USA vs. World format now would be it. Around 25% of the league is comprised of international players, the highest ever. Each of the last six winners for the Most Valuable Player award have gone to international players, and this year will make it seventh as the finalists for the award, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo, are all non-American.
The league has seen a renaissance of international talent over the last decade, and that number only continues to rise. The last two players selected No. 1 overall in the NBA draft were from France, and there’s plenty more international talent coming up the ranks. It only makes sense for the NBA to showcase that, and the All-Star game serves as the perfect opportunity to do so.
If the NBA does decide to adopt a USA vs. World format, they can look at the NHL as a prime example of the format not just working, but being a smashing success. The NHL opted to forgo its traditional All-Star Game this season in favor of a Four Nations format, where teams representing the United States, Canada, Sweden and Finland were put together. It was a massive success for the NHL, and provided exciting and dramatic moments, most notably when Canada and the U.S. faced off in the championship match.
The NBA could easily replicate that, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to fill out rosters for either team if it just went USA vs. the rest of the World. A starting lineup for the World roster would very easily be Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić and Victor Wembanyama. For the U.S.: Stephen Curry, Anthony Edwards, Jayson Tatum, LeBron James and Anthony Davis. And that’s just the starters. Both sides would could fill star-studded rosters, and when you’re fighting for the pride of your country, perhaps it will boost the level of competitiveness, something the league has been lacking in its All-Star Game for years.
We’ll have to see what the final format is, but whatever the league decides, it will ultimately come down to how invested the players are in making it a product people want to watch. We’ve seen for countless years now that the star players don’t really care about the All-Star Game, so perhaps this will get them to change that stance.
