The NBA announced changes to the format of the 2020 All-Star Game on Thursday afternoon, with a new fourth-quarter format, mini-game rewards for each quarter, and a final tribute in honor of the late Kobe Bryant.
There were a few tweets that were needlessly confusing on the matter, and while it isn't exactly a straightforward exercise, it's not all that complicated at the end of the day.
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A quick breakdown of the changes:
- The first three quarters will be considered "mini-games" that will all start with a score of 0-0. The winner of these three quarters will receive $100,000 to be donated to charity for each quarter won.
- Just like in a normal basketball game, the scores of those first three quarters will be added up heading into the fourth quarter.
- Once the fourth quarter begins, the teams will play an untimed quarter with a "target score" of 24 points (Kobe's number before retiring) on top of the leading team's score. For example, if Team LeBron led Team Giannis 150-140 heading into the fourth quarter of this year's game, the first team to reach 174 points wins (Team LeBron would only need to score 24 points while Team Giannas would need to score 34 points), whether that takes 5 minutes or 25 minutes to reach. The winner that hits the final target score will earn $200,000 for charities of their choice.
The charity angle of the game is great, and the target score ending ripped from the "Elam Ending" in The Basketball Tournament is a fun angle the league might have toyed with even if they hadn't designed this year around Bryant's passing. But the incentive structure is still not that different from what it has always been, which is to say there isn't going to be as much incentive to compete as people hope unless the players decide they care.
It's the same issue with the theoretical midseason tournament idea that has lost some steam lately. The players ultimately do not want to risk injury in a midseason game with little to no impact on their careers and legacies, which is completely understandable. Each quarter having some meaning and potential pressure situations sounds nice, though I'm not sure it will make much difference in practice.
This is kind of a "get off my lawn!" take but it's also not exactly clear why the league feels the need to "reset" the score every quarter only to add the results up at the end.
Not wanting your audience to have to do addition and subtraction during the broadcast is understandable, if a little patronizing, but it's well within the ability of their broadcast partners to just show the quarter scores alongside the cumulative scores for the game. Every basketball game in the history of the sport has included logging quarter scores alongside the score of the game, with millions upon millions of people now legally betting on scorelines within halves and quarters, but that is apparently too complicated.
From a Sixers angle, perhaps this will make someone like Joel Embiid more valuable in an All-Star format. Track meets do not favor the big fella, but in a tighter, slower fourth quarter encouraged by the target-score ending, there's a possibility his two-way gifts might actually be able to shine through. I would still bet against it — and I'm sure many Sixers fans would love to see him parked on the bench in any case — but it's at least one potential side effect that could prevent the game from being a dunk fest.
The thing is, does anyone actually want that? The people who tune in to All-Star games want to see the acrobatics and craziness and know there is no actual juice in the game. The people who don't care about All-Star games aren't going to suddenly snap to attention because of a charity element, or because the players played 10 percent harder to get to roughly 35 percent of their max abilities.
Bah humbug, I say. Hopefully, the little kids who this game is designed to entertain still have fun.
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