How do you avoid All-Star criticism? Confuse everyone

The proposed format has a precedent that ... hasn't really helped anything in the past.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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The Circus; Georges Seurat; 1891

ESPN’s Shams Charania has reported more info about the proposed pick-up style tournament that would replace the All-Star Game in San Francisco this February. Nothing is finalized, and part of the leak is quite possibly a temperature check on how the media talks about the concept. But right now it appears the 24 NBA All-Stars would be split into three teams of eight, and they would be joined by the winner of Friday’s Rising Stars Challenge in a single-elimination tournament on Sunday night.

The knockout round would pair off the teams, who would play to 40. (That’s about a 25-minute game in real time, depending on timeouts and fouls.) The winners would meet — one assumes after a “halftime show” performance of some sort — for a game to 25, which could be over in 10 minutes or take 20.

Interestingly, this is the exact format of the Rising Stars Challenge from the last two seasons. (In 2022, the format was similar but the first round games were played to 50.)

Some concerns:

• The format is pretty confusing. Breaking All-Stars into more teams than usual, set score goals instead of using a clock, throwing coaches into weird spots with trying to get players some burn. Sickos will go in understanding what’s going to happen. The casual fan tuning in sight unseen will be deeply confused.

• That championship game could be anti-climactic if it goes quick. It’s going to be really weird to have a big set-up after the first round and some sort of extended break for the game to be over in 10 minutes. Which is possible, because a team scored 211 points in a 48-minute game last year at All-Star.

• The inclusion of the Rising Stars champs is interesting but could be terrible. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but the 2024 NBA Draft class wasn’t very good. You could have Victor Wembanyama (unless he’s an All-Star) but … here, look at the Rising Stars champs from last season: Jalen Williams (cool), Chet Holmgren (injured now, but cool), Jeremy Sochan, Walker Kessler, Bennedict Mathurin, Dereck Lively II, Jordan Hawkins and Shaedon Sharpe (who did not play). Neat players. Are they really primetime All-Star Sunday players? You want those guys lining up against LeBron, Steph, Jokic, Luka, Giannis and Tatum?

• Riffing off of that: the best rookies and sophomores could be pushed by their teams to skip Rising Stars if there’s a chance they could play in four shortened games over the course of the weekend. Maybe not, but imagine Wembanyama doesn’t make All-Star and imagine Big Vic continues to deal with minor injuries. Are the Spurs going to be happy to let him play in Rising Stars and rack up jogs up and down the court all weekend?

• One more riff: are we still going to have G League players in Rising Stars? If so, is there a possibility of G League All-Stars playing for the All-Star Game Tournament Edition championship? Uhh …

  • If not, the Rising Stars Challenge will really be searching for talent. Bronny James, welcome to the Rising Stars Challenge!

• There is still nothing in this proposal to actually incentivize competition. The Rising Stars Challenge is not a bastion a defensive intensity or reasonable shot decisions. It was actually the bleeding edge of carnivalesque basketball that eventually infiltrated the main All-Star Game. Without some level of stakes or a handful of players — one team, perhaps? — taking it very seriously, this will just be some short nonsense instead of the long nonsense we’ve lamented.

The upside:

• It will be impossible to score an embarrassingly high number of points. That should help avoid the loudest and most obvious critiques.

• Since we’ll need three coaches there is the chance that we won’t have serious coaches at all. May I propose that Shaq, Barkley and The Jet coach the three All-Star teams? Bonus points if we get someone feuding with Shaq on his team.

• IS THE ALL-STAR DRAFT COMING BACK?!

What do we think? Still staying away? Intrigued?