The NBA is considering changing the format of its ratings-needy All-Star weekend to an international competition, league commissioner Adam Silver and president of league operations Byron Spruell said Monday.
“Our All-Star Game will return to NBC next season in the middle of their coverage of the Winter Olympics," the commissioner told The Athletic on Monday night. "Given the strong interest we’ve seen in international basketball competitions, most recently in last summer’s Olympics in Paris, we’re discussing concepts with the players’ association that focus on NBA players representing their countries or regions instead of the more traditional formats that we’ve used in the past.”
Earlier in the day, speaking before the Associated Press Sports Editors in New York, Spruell added that the league is considering “formats that lean into this idea of international play, to some extent leaning a little bit on this idea of United States versus rest of the world, and then also going all the way from the mini-tournaments we experimented with in San Francisco, maybe that has some application.”
After the 2025 All-Star weekend, multiple NBA stars like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Victor Wembanyama openly backed the idea of some type of international competition.
"I would love that," Antetokounmpo said, pitching his own idea of USA vs. the World. "I think that would be the most interesting, exciting format. That would give me extra juice to compete."
The league altered the format of this year's event to hopefully breathe new life into things, but reviews were ... not great. And it all looked even worse when juxtaposed against the success of the inaugural 4 Nations tournament, which replaced the NHL's traditional All-Star game. So it's clear a revamp is needed, and that there is, perhaps, already an appetite for something like this.
To add to the international intrigue, Silver noted Monday that it is "not lost on us" that the 2026 All-Star Game—scheduled for Feb. 15, 2026, at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles—will be happening both during the Winter Olympics and at the same location as the 2028 Summer Olympics.
"We'll be competing in the arena at Intuit, where the basketball competition will take place in the 2028 Olympics," he said. "So I think all of those factors, when they come together, it presents an enormous opportunity for us to do something with an international competition instead of the traditional All-Star formats that we've used."
Fingers crossed this actually happens.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as NBA Considering New International Format for All-Star Game.