Tim Bontemps
The NBA announced its long-awaited plans to overhaul the All-Star Game Tuesday night, laying out exactly how the new “United States once again versus the World” format will go and how the teams will be formed.
Beyond the obvious change, going to a three-team format featuring eight-man rosters — two of which will be made up of American players, and a third of international selections — there are a couple of changes to how those players will be selected.
The basics — five starters and seven reserves from each conference, with a combination of fans, media and players voting for the starters and coaches picking the reserves — remain unchanged. What is different, though, is that there will no longer be any positional requirements.
In the past, the starters have been made up of two backcourt players and three frontcourt players, with the reserves being the same split plus two wild cards. This year, though, the starters will be the five top vote-getters, regardless of position, and the reserves will be the top seven, also regardless of position.
The league answered another lingering question — what happens if those 24 players do not evenly break down into 16 American and eight international players? Or would the league force the voting to adhere to those numbers?
The solution, it turns out, is that if the player pool doesn’t reflect that 16-8 split, NBA commissioner Adam Silver will name extra players to the roster to get to the minimum 16 Americans or the minimum eight international players.
So, for example, if there are 14 Americans and 10 international players, Silver would name two more Americans to get to the 16-player minimum. And, if it was an 18-6 split, he would name two international players to get to the eight-player minimum.
Both the NBA and NBC — which is taking over the All-Star Game broadcast after it has spent the past couple of decades on TNT as part of the league’s new television agreement this year — are hoping this change will breathe life into an event that Silver has repeatedly tried to get players to invest more energy into over the past few years.
Part of the appeal of the international format, for NBC’s purposes, is that All-Star Weekend is being built into the network’s coverage of the Winter Olympic Games in February.
As a result, the All-Star Game will not take place at its usual 8 p.m. ET start time, as it regularly has in the past, and instead will be at 5 p.m. ET/ 2 p.m. PT, and will come on the heels of a Team USA hockey game.
As usual, there will be four 12-minute “quarters” as part of the game — although those quarters will be played in a far different manner than usual.
The first three quarters will be made up of round-robin play featuring the three teams, allowing each of them to play twice.
The “fourth” quarter will then be the game featuring the two best teams after the round-robin action. And, if all three teams have 1-1 records, the two with the best point differentials will advance to the championship game.
