Kevin Durant is woefully unimpressed by the NBA’s latest attempt to make the annual All-Star Game more exciting.
The league announced on Tuesday that they are officially implementing an intricate new format for the 2025 All-Star Game in San Francisco. Instead of the traditional Eastern Conference-Western Conference full-game format, this year’s event will be a mini-tournament featuring four teams of eight players each competing in a bracket. The 24 NBA All-Stars will be divided into three teams, and the winner of the Rising Stars Challenge will comprise the fourth team. Meanwhile, each mini-tournament game will be untimed with the winner being determined by the first team to hit 40 points or more.
You can read the full details of the new format below.
The NBA and NBPA announced today a new format for the 2025 NBA All-Star Game in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In addition, NBA All-Star Voting presented by AT&T will tip off on Thursday, Dec. 19 at 10 a.m. ET.
Full details https://t.co/KntyklRIe7 pic.twitter.com/3jIbW1tZWZ
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) December 17, 2024
Speaking with reporters Tuesday, Durant ripped the new All-Star format. He called it “terrible” and said that the league should have just kept the classic East-West setup in place.
“I hate it,” said Durant, per Suns writer Gerald Bourguet. “Absolutely hate it. It’s terrible. All-Star Game formats changing … are terrible in my opinion. We should just go back to East-West and just play the game.
“I think we’ve been trying to bring that flair back somehow with All-Star Weekend,” Durant added. “But [I think] we should just keep it traditional. We’ll see how this one works. You never know, I might be wrong. I’m just another guy with an opinion. But we’ll see how it works.”
After the keeping the traditional East vs. West format throughout the years, the NBA went to fantasy draft-style format in 2018. They also experimented with the “Elam Ending” (where teams play to a certain target score) starting in 2020.
But the problem with Durant’s thinking is that the NBA already returned to the traditional East-West format for the 2024 All-Star Game, and it didn’t go well. It became increasingly obvious that the players didn’t really care about giving much effort, which was apparent from the ridiculous 211-186 final score. Even commissioner Adam Silver seemed very unhappy with the result of the game.
If Durant and his fellow NBA superstars want to keep the traditional East-West format, they will first need to play with the requisite effort to deliver an enjoyable fan experience. Otherwise, the NBA will just keep tinkering to try to maintain some semblance of watchability to the All-Star Game.
