SAN FRANCISCO — On the court, it was a Hollywood scriptwriter’s ending: Hometown hero Stephen Curry’s team (the veteran-filled Shaq OG All-Stars) wins the title and Curry gets to take home the MVP trophy.
One takeaway from the 2025 All-Star Weekend is that it was a good time to be Stephen Curry — “The hosting experience was unbelievable,” Curry said.
What are the other takeaways from All-Star weekend? Here are five.
Was new All-Star format better? Marginally.
“I actually sweat. I didn’t think I was going to sweat,” the Thunder’s Jalen Williams said.
That damning with faint praise pretty much hit the nail on the head. The NBA changed the All-Star format to a four-team mini-tournament with games up to a target score of 40. When the plan was announced, prominent players such as Kevin Durant and Anthony Davis said they hated it, but the players have only themselves to blame — the NBA went back to East vs. West a year ago and the players didn’t try. The product was unwatchable, and the league had to try something.
This year, with the new format, there was a more competitive feel and more defense in Sunday’s All-Star Game than we saw a year ago — Victor Wembanyama said he was going to try and did (it reminded me of a young Giannis Antetokounmpo). However, there wasn’t a lot of it. We got maybe 10% more effort and competitiveness.
“It was better than I expected,” Wembanyama said, joining the damning with faint praise crowd.
Is that enough to bring the format back a year from now with some tweaks? The format worked better on Friday night in the Rising Stars game, but those players also had something tangible to play for — if they won, they would play as the fourth team in the Sunday tournament (and make at least an extra $25,000 for doing so).
“I think it’s interesting,” the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson said of the changes. “It’s different. The games are kind of short [to a target score of 40]. I like the format. It’s something new, something unique. Maybe just score to 50.”
The better question is: Should the NBA hold a traditional All-Star Game at all? The idea of players treating this like an All-Star Game from 30 years ago is dead. The question now is how to make the best of the current reality.
“I don’t want to compare it to any other era because the world has changed,” Curry said. “Life is different. 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. I think this was — I had fun. Our team had fun. That’s kind of all that matters.”
1 vs. 1? USA vs. The World? Format changes discussed
At the same time the NBA was running its grand All-Star experiment, looking for anything to energize their showcase event, two other sports tried something new that worked brilliantly:
• Unrivaled had a competitive, entertaining 1-on-1 tournament with many of the best women’s players in the world (won by Napheesa Collier).
• The NHL ditched its All-Star format to put on the 4 Nations Faceoff. The intensity of playing for their country had the world’s best hockey players going all out — and dropping the gloves at points.
Both of those were compelling because players fully bought in. Be it for personal or national pride, players cared and tried.
That led to plenty of speculation around the All-Star Weekend in San Francisco about whether the NBA could copy that. How about an NBA 1-on-1 tournament? Or switching the All-Star Game to a USA vs. the World format?
Of the two, the USA vs. World format seems more probable—and Giannis Antetokounmpo supports it.
“I would love that. Oh, I would love that,” Antetokounmpo said. “I think that would be the most interesting and most exciting format. I would love that. For sure, I’d take pride in that. I always compete, but I think that will give me a little bit more extra juice to compete, like having Shai, Jokic, Luka, Wemby, Towns, Sengun. I know those players — obviously I’m missing some guys that I cannot think from the top of my head, going against the best U.S. players. I think it would be fun. I think that would be the best format.”
Antetokounmpo says that now, just like he says he’ll compete in the Dunk Contest a year from now. Will the players really care that much a year from now, or will it be another East vs. West disaster?
The 1-on-1 format would draw fan interest, but would NBA players be invested in it the way the Unrivaled (and WNBA) stars were? History suggests this could be more like the Dunk Contest, where top players shy away for fear of being embarrassed.
Kyrie Irving touched on that, telling Rachel Nichols that what would matter is how the event was covered — if it was just analysts ripping players’ mistakes and not an appreciation of the effort, why would players put themselves out there for that?
“If I had the chance to play 1-on-1 with anybody, I would love to do it,” Antetokounmpo said. “Anything that can make the weekend more exciting, more fun for the viewers, for the fans and for the players, I would love to participate…
“I think sometimes you forget, to be good, to be a good one-on-one player, you’ve got to be able to play both ways. You’ve got to get a stop to get the ball. You don’t get a stop, you’re not getting the ball. It’s kind of hard, say, if Kyrie Irving is going against Wemby. He’s got to get a stop. But it would be fun. It would be fun.”
Give us more basketball, fewer breaks
As noted above, the basketball this year was marginally better — when we got to see it.
All-Star Sunday felt a lot of non-basketball stuff, with the game pushed to the periphery. There were long breaks so Kevin Hart could do his bit and insult players. Between both games on Sunday there were 30-minute breaks so we could get things an awkward Mr. Beast shooting contest (happy for the fan that won $100,000 but… what are we doing here?). I loved seeing E-40 out firing up the Bay Area crowd, but the musical interlude became another prolonged break.
Then there was the nearly 20-minute stoppage in the middle of the championship game to celebrate TNT and the Inside the NBA Crew (which will still be around next season, just on ESPN instead). That show and those guys deserve to be celebrated — but not in the middle of the game.
The NBA can’t tell the players to go out there and play hard, to care about the basketball, then have a production that doesn’t seem to care about the basketball? This year, the All-Star Game seemed to be about everything but basketball.
McClung inspires stars to do Dunk Contest?
Did Mac McClung’s history-making third-straight win in the Dunk Contest inspire some of the stars around the league to come out and compete in the Dunk Contest a year from now in Inglewood/Los Angeles?
” I got hacked. I got hacked last night,” Antetokounmpo joked when asked about that X post. Then, he was honest about the idea. “I don’t know. I think you get motivated seeing guys go out there to put on a show. You get motivated. People that can get up there. My thing, A), if I’m healthy and things are going well for me next year, I will want to do it.”
Players saying they want to do the Dunk Contest now and them signing up to do it 11 months from now are two very different things, but we’ll see if the stars will come out in Los Angeles.
No LeBron means he’ll be back next year?
LeBron James skipped All-Star Saturday practice and showed up in the Bay Area Sunday morning — to announce he was out and could not play due to foot and ankle issues.
“You won’t see anything for me tonight, unfortunately. I will not be in uniform tonight, still dealing with ankle and foot discomfort, so I will not be playing tonight,” LeBron said pregame.
Add this to the pile of circumstantial evidence that LeBron is going to play for at least one more season.
LeBron will not pull the Tim Duncan “announce my retirement in a press release” exit — there will be fanfare and likely a farewell tour. Along that line, he would bask in the spotlight and celebration of that would come with one more All-Star Game — especially one in Los Angeles.
LeBron is 40, and what happens next with his career is unpredictable, but it feels like playing with Luka Doncic for an entire season (with a better-positioned supporting cast) and the chance to have these kinds of All-Star celebrations will bring him back for at least one more season.
