NBA announces All-Star tournament plan for this season: 4 teams, 3 games, 1 night
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The NBA 's All-Star Game is going to be an All-Star tournament this season, with the league announcing on Tuesday that it has finalized plans to use a different format for the upcoming midseason showcase in San Francisco. And scoring is sure to be down — way, way, way down.
This season's format is a four-team, three-game, one-night tournament, three teams of eight All-Stars apiece and the fourth team being the winner of the Rising Stars challenge for first- and second-year players. The winning team in all games will be the first to score 40 points.
It'll happen Feb. 16 at the home of the Golden State Warriors. The Rising Stars event is there Feb. 14, headlining 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 final — in last season's game at Indianapolis.
The teams combined to take 289 shot attempts in last year's game, 94% of those being either inside the paint or beyond the 3-point line. “Obviously, with the elephant in the room being us competing, them trying to shake things up is expected and makes sense,” 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 going to come down to whether the players want to go at it, and I would love to see that. Love to be a part of that for sure, and hopefully it happens.”.
There have been other All-Star format shakeups in recent years. After the first 66 All-Star Games were basically played like a normal game — Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference, four quarters, 12 minutes apiece — the league switched to a format where the leading vote-getters from each conference served as captains who got to draft their teams.
