The 2025 NBA All-Star Game was a disappointment, and that has become the norm in recent years. While the 2025 event was marred by presentation issues and frequent stoppages, the revamped format was the result of poor effort by the players in 2024 and the previous few seasons. After yet another underwhelming showcase, fans and critics alike are wondering how exactly one of the league’s marquee regular-season events fell so far.
Former NBA center Brendan Haywood has a theory. On an appearance on Triple Threat with Ashley Nicole Moss on CBS Sports Network, he argued that the decline started in 2017, the year after Kobe Bryant retired.
“I think that starts with the faces of the league,” Haywood said. “You wanna know why the All-Star game was so good in the 90s? Michael Jordan took it serious. The face of the league sets the temperature for what the league is gonna be. If the LeBron, if whoever else you think is the face of the league at this moment, whether that’s Ant-Man, whether that’s Wemby, whether that’s Joker, Jayson Tatum, if those guys walked in there and say, ‘Yo, we’re playing hard,’ then that’s what everybody’s gonna do. Because at the end of the day, those guys set the standard. Michael Jordan set the standard because the standard was set before him with guys like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. He just kept that tradition going.
“You know when the quality of the All-Star game really started going down? When Kobe Bryant retired. He held up the standard. Hey listen, Kobe Bryant got his nose broken in the All-Star Game. Picking up LeBron James going back and forth with him because there was a level of competitiveness and Kobe always felt like, hey, I gotta carry the mantle that Michael Jordan handed it to me. I’m gonna hand it to you guys and you guys gotta run with it. Well, no one’s running with it right now. Everybody’s running from it, and that is the problem.”
Haywood played 13 seasons in the NBA, and he was Jordan’s teammate on the Wizards for his first two years in the league.
While effort isn’t exactly measurable, the quality of the All-Star Game has certainly declined since Bryant’s retirement. The best All-Star Game since then came in 2020, which was played less than a month after Bryant’s death. Commissioner Adam Silver renamed the All-Star MVP trophy after Bryant, and a number of players seemingly played hard to try to earn it. Kawhi Leonard ultimately wound up doing so.
The face of the league both after and arguably during Bryant’s career has been LeBron James, but in recent years, he has seemingly invested less energy into All-Star Games than he had in the past. Aside from the 2022 game played in his hometown of Cleveland, James has not played 20 minutes in an All-Star Game this decade. He has made a recent habit of arriving for All-Star Weekend late, often Saturday night, and this season, he chose to sit out of the game with foot and ankle discomfort.
Lakers’ LeBron James misses first NBA All-Star Game in 21 years with ‘ankle and foot discomfort’
Sam Quinn
The future of the All-Star Game is uncertain. The format has now changed three years in a row, and next season, it will have a new broadcaster in NBC. Fortunately, the player widely expected to eventually take James’ mantle as the face of the league, Victor Wembanyama, did play hard on Sunday in his first All-Star Game. Hopefully that portends improved effort around the league in the years to come.
