NBA announces renewed All-Star tournament for San Francisco

LAS VEGAS — The NBA All-Star Game will be an All-Star tournament this season, and the league announced Tuesday that it has finalized plans to use a different format for the upcoming midseason exhibition in San Francisco.

And the score will surely be going down, way, way, way down.

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

It will happen on February 16 at the home of the Golden State Warriors. The Rising Stars event will take place on February 14 and will headline All-Star Friday.

NBA commissioner Adam 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 end). in last season’s game in Indianapolis.

The teams combined to take 289 shots in that game, 94% of them inside the paint or beyond the 3-point line.

“Obviously, with the elephant in the room being us competing, it’s expected and makes sense that they would try to turn things around,” said Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a likely All-Star selection this season for the third time. “At the end of the day, it’s all about whether the players want to do it, and I’d love to see that. I’d love to be a part of that, for sure, and hopefully it happens.”

There have been other changes to the All-Star Game format in recent years. After the first 66 All-Star Games, which were played in the traditional format (Eastern Conference versus Western Conference, with four 12-minute quarters each), the league switched to a new format in which the top vote-getters from each conference they participated. as captains and selected their teams.

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

In four of the captain’s chosen years, the All-Star Games used objective scoring at the end of the games, ensuring that the winner was decided based on a successful shot. The final quarters were timeless and the winner was the first team to reach the leading team’s score after three quarters, plus 24 points, a tribute to Kobe Bryant’s final jersey number.

Last season he returned to the East vs. West format and saw a record point total along with Luka Doncic attempting a 70-foot jumper, Donovan Mitchell throwing a 50-foot inside pass, Bam Adebayo throwing the ball to himself. against Nikola Jokic’s butt, Tyrese Haliburton attempted and made five 3-pointers in a 92-second span, and Damian Lillard capped the night with a 44-foot jumper, which wasn’t even his longest jumper of the game.

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

The league hopes it has found the answer.

Voting format

All-Star Game voting begins Thursday and the format does not change.

Fans can cast votes daily through Jan. 20 for three frontcourt players and two backcourt players from both conferences.

That 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 choose the 14 players designated as “reserves.”

But the starters and reserves columns won’t mean much on game night, because there will be 15 different players starting (five from each of the three teams) and only nine players coming off the bench in those semifinal games.

How teams will be chosen

TNT analysts and former NBA players Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith will select teams from the 24-player All-Star pool on February 6. The teams will carry their names: Team Shaq, Team Charles and Team Kenny.

The Rising Stars winner who will go to the All-Star tournament will be called Team Candace, after retired WNBA star Candace Parker, also a TNT analyst.

Technical staff

The coaching staffs of the teams with the best records from the Eastern and Western Conferences will attend the All-Star Game. (They can’t be the Milwaukee or Minnesota coaching staffs, because they coached last season.)

The East and West head coaches will each coach one team in the tournament. One assistant coach from each squad will serve as head coach for each of the other two teams.

cash prize

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

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

The Associated Press contributed to this story.