NBA announces revamped All-Star Tournament for San Francisco

LAS VEGAS – The NBA All-Star Game will be an all-star tournament this season. The league announced Tuesday that it has finalized plans to use a different format for the upcoming midseason showcase in San Francisco.

And the points tally will definitely be worse – way, way, way down.

This season’s format is a four-team, three-game, one-night tournament involving three teams of eight All-Stars each, with the fourth team being the winner of the Rising Stars Challenge for first- and second-year players. The winning team of all games is the first to score 40 points.

It will take place on February 16th at the home stadium of the Golden State Warriors. The Rising Stars event takes place on February 14th and is the headliner of All-Star Friday.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver has wanted a more competitive All-Star event for some time, and this change comes after the teams combined for a record 397 points in last season’s game in Indianapolis – 211-186 in the finale.

In total, the teams took 289 shots in this game, 94% of which came either inside or beyond the 3-point line.

“Given that we’re the elephant in the room in the competition, it’s obviously expected and sensible that they would try to shake things up,” said Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, making his third appearance this season likely to be selected for the All-Star selection. “Ultimately it will come down to whether the players want to get involved and I would like to see that. I’m definitely happy to be a part of it and hope it happens.”

There have been further changes to the All-Star format in recent years. After the first 66 All-Star Games were played in the traditional format – Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference, with four 12-minute quarters – the league switched to a new format in which the leading vote-getters from each conference served as captains and formed their teams.

LeBron James served as one of the captains all six times, Giannis Antetokounmpo was the other captain three times, Kevin Durant twice and Stephen Curry once.

In four years of choosing captains, the All-Star Games used a target score at the end of games to ensure that the winner was determined based on a good shot. The fourth quarter was untimed and the winner was the first team to equal the leading team’s score plus 24 points after three quarters – an homage to Kobe Bryant’s last jersey number.

Last season, the East vs. West format returned and featured record scoring: Luka Doncic attempted a 70-foot jumper, Donovan Mitchell threw a 50-foot underhand inbound pass and Bam Adebayo threw the ball to himself by throwing it from Nikola Jokic’s butt, Tyrese Haliburton tried and made five 3-pointers in 92 seconds and Damian Lillard capped the night with a 44-foot jump – which wasn’t even his longest shot of the game.

“I think something could be done about it,” Lillard said after his MVP-winning performance in last season’s game. “I’m not sure what, but I think there’s a way to make it a more competitive game.”

The league hopes it has found the answer.

Voting format

All-Star voting begins Thursday and the format remains the same.

Fans can cast their votes daily until January 20th for three frontcourt and two backfield players from both conferences.

This will be part of a weighted formula – 50% fan vote, 25% media panel vote, 25% current player vote – to determine the 10 players who will be designated as “starters.”

NBA head coaches will select the 14 players referred to as “reserves.”

But the “starter” and “reserve” columns won’t mean much on game night, as there are 15 different players in the starting lineup – five from each of the three teams – and only nine players come off the bench in the semifinal games.

How the teams are selected

TNT analysts and former NBA players Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith will select teams from the 24-player All-Star pool on February 6th. The teams will have their names – Team Shaq, Team Charles and Team Kenny.

The Rising Stars winner going to the All-Star Tournament is called Team Candace, after retired WNBA star Candace Parker, also a TNT analyst.

Coaching staff

The coaching staffs of the teams with the best records in the Eastern and Western Conferences participate in the All-Star Game. (It can’t be the coaching staff of Milwaukee or Minnesota since they coached last season.)

The East and West head coaches will each coach one team in the tournament. One assistant coach from each staff will serve as head coach for each of the other two teams.

Prize money

The All-Star Game has a prize pool of $1.8 million.

Each player on the All-Star Champion team will receive $125,000, players on the runner-up team will receive $50,000, and players from teams eliminated in the semifinals will receive $25,000.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.