The NBA All-Star Game is in the same position as it has been for the past decade: a truly disappointing and underwhelming display of the league’s top players in a mediocre and unremarkable two-to-three hour slog of television. The age of serious competitive All-Star Games has long passed for a new age of half-court shooting and highlight play empty of conventional defense or effort.
Kevin Durant’s recent comments against Nikola Jokić and Luka Dončić are particularly interesting given this consistent trend. Durant stated, “If you look at Luka Dončić and Nikola Jokić now, let’s go back and look at what they do in the All-Star Game. Is that competition? So we haven’t questioned what they’ve been doing. But we’re going to question the old heads, and the Americans.” He mainly targets the media, with whom he has had a tense and problematic relationship with for the entirety of his career; however, I feel his shift of blame onto international players is unfair given that the All-Star Game has undergone major changes as a means to revitalize motivations for play.
This has been an ongoing problem, and blaming two players for a single game’s performance is particularly immature and narrow-minded. It reduces a systemic problem to a single flaw, as if the All-Star Game’s decline could be traced to a few lazy possessions rather than a decade-long cultural shift. The league’s stars, American or international, are responding rationally to a structure that discourages risk and injury.
Given this reality, the NBA All-Star Weekend, more so than the game itself, is entirely outdated and serves more as a historical tradition. The league itself doesn’t need to generate revenue or attention from the event, often relying on players and the spectacle of the game itself for maintaining its image and reputation. This is evident with the current state of the event. The main attraction, the All-Star Game, has new trouble this year with maintaining its roster with Stephen Curry, the culturally accepted best shooter of all time, Giannis Antetokounmpo, likely a future first-ballot Hall of Famer and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, last season’s MVP, all sidelined with apparent injuries, leaving newer and less recognizable faces to take the court. While I enjoy the play of Deni Advija, Alperen Şengün and Brandon Ingram, these players have less marketability and social impact, highlighting a visible sign of the event’s continuous declining popularity.
Looking at complementary events, the Dunk Contest’s rostered history of Michael Jordan, Julius Erving and Dominique Wilkins has faded for benchwarmers only NBA fanatics can recognize. Averaging roughly four and a half points per game in the regular season, the competition now reflects the league’s difficulty in convincing established stars to participate. Simply put, the players have lost interest in the weekend itself and want to enjoy their scheduled time-off away from the game.
In this new reality, Damian Lillard’s participation in the three-point contest highlights how the weekend should adapt. The three-point contest — the most statistical of the events — choosing their participants by their statistics throughout the regular season based on made threes, three point percentage and other factors allowed Lillard to enter based on previous accolades and achievements.
Lillard, one of the best shooters of all time, has won the contest twice; however, he has failed to step on the court this season due to an ACL tear. This shift reveals a growing tension between authenticity and marketability. On one hand, the contest preserves its prestige by featuring a proven star whose reputation alone lends legitimacy to the event. On the other, it exposes how dependent All-Star Weekend has become on name recognition rather than present competition.
Conversely, this trend highlights the current state of the league as a whole. The NBA has entered a new era with Curry, LeBron James, Durant, James Harden, Russell Westbrook and various others entering the final years of their careers with their retirements looming over the league as a whole. These staples of the league have served as the sport’s image for the past two decades and with their subsequent aging the league must transition and find new faces to fill their place.
Historically, at least, that has been the role of the All-Star Weekend by introducing and creating household names. Unfortunately with the event’s new attempt to create nostalgia with older players prevalent in events, the weekend fails to showcase talent and entertain fans. As it stands, the weekend operates in limbo, neither competitive nor compelling, relying on nostalgia rather than spectacle. Fans are asked to care without stakes and players are asked to perform without purpose. Until those contradictions are resolved, the All-Star Weekend will remain a hollow ritual instead of a true celebration of the league’s present and its future.