How to Turn NBA All-Star Into a 3-on-3 Tournament
Here's my plan to give the people what they want out of All-Star Weekend.
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Le Cirque, Georges Seurat
The funny thing about widespread NBA reform ideas (of which I have written plenty, including the one below) is that they seek to improve things that by all indications already work pretty well. NBA All-Star is not really in need of saving. It does its job pretty well: celebrating the best players in the league in a high-profile way to attract major advertisers to pay the NBA’s broadcast partners lots of money so they in turn can pay the NBA lots of money.
The NBA made some tweaks this year, implementing an Elam ending and giving charities money based on individual quarter victories. But in the spirit of truly upending the system and getting even more eyeballs for the NBA’s various sponsors, here’s an idea: replace the All-Star Game with a 3-on-3 tournament.
(This idea may have been floated in the past. Nothing is really new. A 1-on-1 tournament has been a popular cause for some time. If someone has previously written a case for a 3-on-3 All-Star tournament, salute!)
It’s time for the NBA to take 3-on-3 seriously. It’s an Olympic sport now, and the BIG3 has had some domestic success. 3-on-3 is more like traditional basketball than 1-on-1, and convincing players (and their agents) to do a high-end 1-on-1 tournament would be very difficult due to the potential for embarrassment.
The first thing you’d do to implement an All-Star 3-on-3 tournament is expand the rosters to 15 from each conference, which the NBA should do even if it maintains its current structure. Regular NBA rosters have 15 spots. Why shouldn’t the All-Star team? This would also prevent Adam Silver from having to add names when injuries knock players out in the run-up to All-Star Weekend.
The NBA should also eliminate positional designations in All-Star voting — fans, media and players vote for their top five players in each conference, coaches vote in 10 more from each conference. No counting frontcourt players and guards anymore. Again, the NBA should do this regardless of format changes.
Now, how to make this a 3-on-3 tournament instead of a 5-on-5 game. With 30 players, you need six captains. Take the top three vote-getters in each conference. This year, it would have been LeBron James, Luka Doncic and Anthony Davis in the West and Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid and Pascal Siakam in the East. Those are your six captains.
Each captain picks an active NBA player who is not an All-Star this season as a manager/coach. (Give actual NBA coaches the weekend off, please.) This manager/coach will not dress or play in the 3-on-3 games, but will be there for sideline interviews and to assist the captain with rotations and whatnot. It’d be nice to give All-Star shine to some less famous players.
Then you do a snake draft, setting the draft order in order of who got the most fan votes. For this year, that means the first round would go: LeBron, Luka, Giannis, Davis, Embiid, Siakam. The second round would go Siakam, Embiid, Davis, Giannis, Luka, LeBron. And so on. You do this for four rounds, preferably on live T.V. if the NBA can schedule it properly so as not to interfere with team activities.
There are no limitations on who the captains can draft based on starters vs. reserves or positions. Pick a 5-man roster that can win a 3-on-3 tournament. That’s it. (Using a 5-man roster over FIBA’s 4-man roster should reduce playing time.)
You use FIBA 3x3 rules: a single 10-minute period or first to 21 points, scoring by ones and twos, you have to win by at least two. Substitutions at any dead ball, one timeout per team.
How the tournament works: on All-Star Saturday, you have round robin play by conference. Each team plays two games: Team LeBron against Team Luka and Team AD, Team Giannis vs. Team Embiid and Team Siakam, etc. This is six games. With the timeouts and commercials between games, this should take less than two hours. You extend the NBA All-Star Saturday imprint by like an hour and — this is important — move the dunk contest to Sunday. You make the three-point contest and the most intriguing 3-on-3 round robin games the new centerpieces of All-Star Saturday.
Each captain picks a charity to play for, and charity money is doled out by how well teams do.
The best two teams in each conference by wins or, as a tiebreaker, scoring margin move on to the knockouts. The NBA can come up with a full list of tiebreakers in the case that all three teams go 1-1 in knockouts (which is plausible) and the margins end up the same. The NBA is good at coming up with tiebreakers. Fastest to 21 in any game could be a good one.
On Sunday, you have your knockouts with the four survivors. Yes, this risks that a few of the biggest stars don’t make it to Sunday. They’d better try reasonably hard on Saturday or they stand to be ridiculed! Them’s the breaks. You can throw in a consolation game between teams eliminated on Saturday if you really need them guaranteed an appearance on T.V. on Sunday. Otherwise, the top West team plays the second East team, and the second West team plays the top East team. That’s a total of about 40 minutes of action after the hour-long All-Star introductions. Then you slide in the halftime performance du jour. Then you do the dunk contest. (Add Saturday’s G League dunk contest champion to the field now that you have them on separate days.) Then you do the 3-on-3 championship game. Fin.
With a maximum of four 10-minute games per team and plenty of room to use subs, no player should end up playing much. It would limit All-Stars from participating in the dunk contest, but this isn’t a problem because All-Stars rarely do the dunk contest anyway. The draft would be hella fun, the games would be interesting and different, players might care some percentage more.
What’s to lose?
Scores
Knicks 139, Cavaliers 134 (OT) — Kevin Love is still a Cavalier and this 33-13 game was his cry for attention from the rumor gods.
Mavericks 112, Pacers 103 — Very strong Kristaps Porzingis performance (38-12) to keep Dallas afloat without Luka Doncic. Domantas Sabonis was one assist off a triple-double. Baltic ballers, stand up!
Warriors 125, Wizards 117 — Golden State is on a 2-game win streak. Steph who?!
Celtics 123, Hawks 115 — Are we sure Boston should be touching its roster before the trade deadline? The C’s are tied for the No. 3 seed in the East, one game out of No. 2 in the loss column.
Suns 97, Nets 119 — Strong performance from Deandre Ayton in the loss. Good to see him play well.
Sixers 106, Heat 137 — Just an absolutely brutal drubbing for Philly. Something’s wrong here. The Sixers are awful on the road, but this type of defensive failure in an important game against a team a) you’re chasing and b) might face in the first round is inexcusable for a team with (what we thought were) legitimate title aspirations. Philly’s offense wasn’t the problem, so you can’t pin this on the Ben Simmons/Joel Embiid issue. The Sixers just got shredded by Jimmy Butler, Goran Dragic and Bam Adebayo. No two ways about it.
Pistons 82, Grizzlies 96 — Good defense-first win for Memphis. Also, get after it, Dillon Brooks!
Wolves 109, Kings 113 — Minnesota has lost 12 straight. Nothing a well-timed D’Angelo Russell acquisition can’t fix, right? … Right?
Spurs 105, Clippers 108 — A perfect distraction from The Nightmare Of The Iowa Caucuses. Spurs are playing their hearts out and sit two back of No. 8 in the loss column. A drip too much Kawhi Leonard in this one. Shouts to LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan — these dudes always play hard.
Schedule
Four games with a TNT doubleheader. Maybe with the light schedule we can redo the Iowa caucuses? All times are Eastern. Games are on League Pass unless otherwise noted.
Bucks at Pelicans, 7:30, TNT
Hornets at Rockets, 8
Blazers at Nuggets, 9
Spurs at Lakers, 10, TNT
Links
Zach Lowe’s trade deadline primer.
Mike Sykes on Adidas’s environmental sneakers.
Dan Devine on how the Rockets are pushing the center position to its breaking point.
Love this Fred Katz piece on John Wall, who catches a lot of jokes for his contract but seems like a good, well-adjusted human. I really do love watching him play basketball.
Ricky O’Donnell on the prospect of the Raptors being the deadline’s scariest buyer.
Kevin O’Connor reports the Warriors are playing hardball with the Wolves over D-Lo.
Rob Mahoney on Damian Lillard.
At SB Nation, I wrote about how little the China controversy actually affected the grand scheme of NBA revenue. Every dollar matters to some extent in a cartel of 30 capitalists, but all the panic from October now seems rather overblown.
Anyone aching for a little Tristan Thompson in their life?
How the Kings hold the key to trade deadline week.
Thanks for your support. Be excellent to each other.