With 8:55 remaining in the fourth quarter, the 2001 NBA All-Star Game was approaching its expected conclusion. The bigger, stronger, more talented Western Conference All-Stars were ahead 95-74 over the East. The game was a wrap.
Fans began clearing out of the MCI Center in Washington D.C. Kobe Bryant sat on the bench with sideline reporter Jim Gray, doing play-by-play in Italian for the NBC broadcast. He even yukked it up with his Los Angeles Lakers teammate and frenemy Shaquille O’Neal. On the court, Jerry Stackhouse was fouled while attempting to put back an offensive rebound. At the sound of the whistle, Allen Iverson staggered towards the bench.
The Eastern Conference All-Stars were down but not defeated.
“There was a sense of pride,” Grant Hill, then of the Orlando Magic, tells Complex. Fans voted Hill in as a starter but he didn’t play due to injury. “Even though it’s an All-Star Game, the idea of not competing or not trying to win was foreign.”
The mood shifted inside Coach Larry Brown’s huddle. “Why not us?,” Iverson asked during the timeout. “Why can’t we be the ones to come back.”
The team rallied. Soon, Stackhouse, Vince Carter, and Dikembe Mutombo echoed The Answer’s call. “Why not us?”
Stephon Marbury, playing in his first All-Star Game, shared Iverson’s conviction. “We’re not gonna lose,” he thought. “We’re gonna win.”
Twenty five years later, the 2001 NBA All Star Game lives on social media: sports nostalgia accounts on Instagram regularly post clips and YouTube videos appear under the headings “Back in the Day When [the] NBA All Star Game Was Worth Watching” and “The Greatest Ending in NBA All Star Game History.”
Rewatching the 2001 iteration confirms that the current version of the All-Star Game is broken. During the last quarter century, it has devolved from a competitive exhibition into a sloppy rec league game with no defense and little effort—the best hoopers in the world trying their hardest not to get injured.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has experimented with the format over the last decade to zhuzh up the game but none of his ideas have worked. They’ve tried team captains drafting their rosters and a tournament featuring “OGs vs. Rising Stars.” This year’s installment in Inglewood will feature a three-team round robin tournament between two squads of American-born players and one composed of international ballers.
Fox Sports personality Nick Wright recently suggested a more provocative reboot. “White guys vs. Black guys,” Wright said on The Bill Simmons Podcast. “Guys would play fucking hard.”
There were calls for change back in 2001. Prior to All-Star Weekend in D.C., outlets including ESPN published “How to Fix the All-Star Game” columns. But the league had greater concerns than its midseason showcase at the time.
The NBA was in the eye of its post-Jordan swoon in 2001. Ratings had declined 15 percent in 1999 following Michael Jordan’s (second) retirement and the owner’s disastrous lockout of the players, which postponed the 1998-99 season until February. Ratings dropped another 15 percent in the 1999-2000 season. Attendance was also down.
The league had taken a massive PR hit.
A February 2001 New York Times house editorial titled “Basketball’s Troubles” spelled out what was allegedly ruining the game: too much iso-ball on the court and an image problem off of it—Iverson’s homophobic rap lyrics and Kobe and Shaq’s budding feud, which then NBA Commissioner David Stern called “petulant.” The rot wasn’t limited to the players though. Members of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ front office had recently been suspended and docked draft capital for the Joe Smith fiasco and new Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was throwing tantrums and berating referees from his courtside seat.
“I think the product and the perception we have to the public right now, people don’t want it,” Utah Jazz All-Star Karl Malone said at the time.
On the morning of the 50th annual All-Star Game, Stern pushed back on the media narrative. He embarked on an intense press run, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, ESPN’s Outside the Lines, a CNN Town Meeting, ABC’s Capital Sunday, and later, Fox Sports Net. He shrewdly acknowledged the problems but professed optimism. He believed in this crop of young stars. Most of all, he believed in the product.
There was little reason to presume the All-Star Game would turn public opinion. There hadn’t been a competitive game since 1993. More importantly, on paper it was a mismatch. Even with O’Neal sitting out, the West had an advantage in star power and size.
“We were looking around during the opening tip-off,” Vince Carter tells Complex, “and it was like, ‘Damn, KG is playing the three.’”
The game proceeded as anticipated. The East had no answers for the West’s massive frontline (Garnett, Chris Webber, and Tim Duncan) and fell behind 11–0 to start the first quarter. The lead ballooned to 95-74 when a television timeout was called with 8:55 remaining in the fourth quarter.
The East then switched tactics and rallied.
“We wanted to play fast,” Carter says. “We couldn’t play half court basketball. We wanted to spread the floor and allow our athletes to get easy buckets.”
With Iverson pushing the tempo, the East went on a 9-0 run. They soon cut the lead to 100-93.
When Kobe Bryant checked back into the game with around five minutes remaining he joked with Iverson. “You all going small, huh?”
The East had turned to a small ball lineup to close the game, surrounding Iverson with Marbury, Carter, and Tracy McGrady on the wing, while Mutombo protected the rim and cleaned up the boards—common practice in 2026 but outside-the-box for the turn of the century.
The strategy worked to perfection, setting the stage for—just as the YouTube video promised—the greatest ending in NBA All-Star Game history. After Bryant hit a difficult 20-footer over the outstretched arms of Mutombo to give the West a 110-108 lead with 37 seconds remaining, Marbury slowly dribbled up the court. On the previous possession, he hit a three to tie the game. True to form, the man nicknamed Starbury wasn’t thinking of passing the ball.
“This was my first time on that stage,” Marbury recalls today. “That was the moment to shine.”
Without hesitation, he launched a rainbow from 26 feet that put the East ahead 111-110. Their attention then turned to stopping Bryant, who’d scored six straight points for the West.
The East had a simple plan for the final possession: get the ball out of Bryant’s hands. “We had an idea Kobe was going to get the ball,” Carter says. “If a pick and roll was run, we wanted to keep two [defenders] on [him].”
With eight seconds left, Bryant got the ball on the left wing with Marbury covering him. Duncan then set a screen and rolled down to the left block, while Bryant dribbled towards the top of the key, where Mutombo met him. Bryant pump faked Marbury in the air and found Duncan on the left baseline with time ticking down. But just as Duncan rose to shoot, Carter rotated down and tipped the potential game-winner.
The East’s bench flooded the court. Carter popped his jersey in jubilation. East reserve Latrell Sprewell found Duncan on the court and taunted him. Marbury hugged anyone within arm’s length.
“Don’t tell me those guys don’t care about winning,” Doug Collins said on the NBC telecast to his broadcast partner Marv Albert. “When that game was on the line you saw exactly the competitive instincts come out.”
Iverson, who scored 15 of his game-high 25 points in the fourth quarter, was named the game’s Most Valuable Player. “Everybody felt like we couldn’t win because we were overmatched,” he said afterward. “But you can’t measure the size of someone’s heart.”
The game is remembered for many things: Iverson’s speed and spirit; Bryant’s shotmaking; Carter’s block on Duncan. “Who says they don’t play defense in All-Star Games?” Hill says.
What’s most striking about it though is how the East made its comeback.
“The difference was the guys stepped up with—dare I say it—playoff level intensity,” says Carter.
Can the All Star Game be fixed? Stephon Marbury has a simple resolution: The NBA should ask the players beforehand if they’re willing to give the same effort they do during offseason scrimmages at UCLA.
“The dudes who want to play… they can,” he says. “The dudes that don’t want to play, they can sit down.”
Additional reporting by Keith Nelson Jr.