The 2025 NBA All-Star Weekend was held in San Francisco, California from February 14th to the 16th. The Rising Stars Challenge and Celebrity All-Star Game were played on Friday while the Slam Dunk Contest, the Three-Point Contest, and the NBA Skills Challenge took place on Saturday. It all culminated in the 2025 NBA All-Star Game on Sunday.
This year, the game was replaced with the 2025 NBA All-Star Championship, a single-elimination tournament comprised of four teams with eight players each. The winner of each game was the first squad to score at least 40 points.
Candace Parker’s Rising Stars fell to Shaq’s OGs 42-35 while Charles Barkley’s Global Stars downed Kenny Smith’s Young Stars 41-32. In the final, Shaq’s OGs beat the Global Stars 41-25 to win the tournament.
Unfortunately, many high-level NBAers did not take too kindly to the NBA All-Star Game’s format change. Atlanta Hawks four-time All-Star guard Trae Young was one of the players who was disappointed with the tournament.
“To be honest, I didn’t like it at all,” Young said. “I didn’t like the breaks. The games were so short. Obviously, we can score. So, they’re trying to, I feel like, trying to extend the game, extend the TV time with the breaks and things like that.”
“I would say it’s not ideal to stop like that if you want guys to be physical,” said Boston Celtics guard and four-time All-Star Jaylen Brown. “I think guys were still out there having fun. All the OGs, team old knees and old backs. We came out on top, so I don’t think anyone else should have had any excuses. It’s definitely not ideal.”
“I would rather play without breaks,” explained Oklahoma City Thunder guard and MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. “I feel like it was a little bit more towards the competitive side tonight, which is a good feeling, a step in the right direction. I guess it’s up to the guys that handle all that stuff to figure out what’s next and how to keep making it more and more interesting. Hopefully, we get there one day.”
Current All-Stars weren’t the only ones who had issues with the new format. The Detroit News’ Rod Beard, who has been the publication’s Detroit Pistons beat writer since 2015, disapproved of the tournament. He said it fell “flat,” earning the game a “one-star review.”
“After last season’s All-Star Game finished in a 211-186 win for the Eastern Conference, there was clamoring for change after a lack of defense led to the highest-scoring outing in the midseason classic,” Beard wrote early Monday morning. “That change ended up being a nearly unwatchable production that included a disjointed patchwork of everything from a strange three-point-shooting contest between Damian Lillard and a selected fan — in which the fan won $100,000 — to an 18-minute, in-game tribute to the TNT broadcast team of Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal, and Charles Barkley. The delay took so long that Kyrie Irving was running up and down the court to try to stay loose.”
Michael Pina, a writer for The Ringer and a sports journalist with over 14 years of experience covering the NBA, was another person who disliked 2025’s tournament.
“Relative to the competitive juice seen in a typical professional basketball game, the effort level on Sunday night was pitiful,” Pina wrote on Monday. “Relative to the past few All-Star Games, this one had more juice than we’ve seen in quite some time… Then the championship game happened, and a grueling 20-minute break to commemorate Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal, and Ernie Johnson drained all the momentum, energy, and meaning out of the actual on-court product, and it quickly devolved into an unserious exhibition, with Steph Curry taking half-court shots (he made one!) and transition defense no longer existing.”
Even Kenny Smith, one of the All-Star team coaches, basically called the tournament a failure by saying that he thinks the league is going to “change the format back” next season in the middle of one of the games.
Regardless of who you talk to, it sounds like the NBA’s changes to the 2025 All-Star Game will be short-lived.
