It was six iterations ago that the NBA All-Star Game switched from its traditional East vs West format to go with more of a draft format with the leading vote-getters in each conference choosing teams regardless of the conference they played in.
That is now a thing of the past. The Association announced that it is going back to the traditional conference play format for February’s All-Star game in Indianapolis.
“As the league celebrates basketball’s deep roots in the state of Indiana, the 73rd NBA All-Star Game will feature the rerturn of both the classic matchup between the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference and the traditional scoring system with four 12-minute quarters,” the NBA press release read. “The voting process to determine the NBA All-Stars will remain the same, with 12 players selected from each conference.”
LeBron James has been captain all six times that the NBA has used its current format. The idea of him again teaming up with Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and Luka Doncic on the west’s team could very well be appealing. The same thing could be said for new Milwaukee Bucks teammates Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard back east.
This is something that the Association has been considering for a bit now, as evidenced by recent comments from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
“We’re looking at some potential changes in format in Indianapolis this year,” Silver said about the 2024 All-Star Game earlier in October. “Maybe a return to something more traditional in terms of how the teams are presented. We went to sort of this captain and draft notion, but clearly historically it was East vs. West. So that’s maybe something we are looking at.”
There are likely other factors that led to the NBA coming to this determination. The 2023 iteration of the annual exhibition game saw television ratings drop 23% from the previous year. In fact, NASCAR’s Daytona 500 saw an average of 8.2 million viewers compared to 4.6 million for the NBA All-Star Game.
Either way, traditionalists around the league and those who are interested in the otherwise meaningless game are bound to be happy.