‘I hate it’: NBA players skeptical of new one-day All-Star Game tournament | N.B.A

Four teams, three games, one evening. That’s the plan for the 2025 NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco, confirmed after months of discussions about the lack of competitiveness and, well, defense, at the 2024 event.

The NBA introduced a new three-team one-night tournament consisting of eight All-Stars drafted to teams by former NBA players Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal from Inside the NBA.

“I hate it. I absolutely hate it,” Suns forward Kevin Durant said Tuesday of the new format. “It’s terrible. … We should just go back to East-West, just play a game.”

Last year’s All-Star Game was widely ridiculed, even though it reverted from the Captain’s Draft to the traditional East-West matchup in which the fan-voted leaders from each conference fielded two teams.

In 2025, the winner of the Rising Stars Challenge competition between first and second years will be the fourth team in the All-Star Game tournament.

Tournament games are decided by the first team to reach 40 points.

Commissioner Adam Silver reiterated on opening night of the 2024-25 season that the NBA is committed to creating a competitive atmosphere for the All-Star Game after an event-record 397 points were scored at the 2024 event in Indianapolis.

The $1.8 million prize pool will be divided based on the results of the tournament in 2025. The tournament winner’s players will receive $125,000 and the runners-up will receive $50,000 each. The two teams eliminated with losses in the first game will receive $25,000 per player.

The Bucks’ Damian Lillard was voted All-Star Game MVP in 2024 with 39 points, taking several shots closer to midfield than the three-point line.

Last month he said the problem with the All-Star Game was an “expenditure issue.”

“The NBA has an expense problem with All-Star games, so what do they do? They’re building a format where all the stars don’t play against all the stars, and they’re shortening the actual game into a tournament where they only have to score 65 points to win,” Lillard said in a post to X on Nov. 21 . “These guys are professionals. Let’s stop this nonsense.”