The NBA's All-Star break presents more than just the league's annual mid-February festivities. It also brings annual angst for those who want to watch a somewhat competitive basketball game contested by the world's best ballers.
San Antonio Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama has heard your cries, reiterating that he'll never step foot on a basketball court without caring about the final result. "I want to push the great players of this sport to play in the All-Star Game just as hard as I will," the 22-year-old said recently. "We'll see how it goes, But if they don't play hard, I'll do it without them."
Wembanyama might be the NBA's last hope to save its midseason event.
Whether the Association even needs a competitive All-Star Game is a conversation worth having. North America's other major sports leagues rarely see intense All-Star clashes, save for the odd Midsummer Classic in baseball, and yet those entities don't seem to mind. The NBA clearly does.
As conversations about waning All-Star enthusiasm grew louder, commissioner Adam Silver publicly acknowledged the issue, and the league office spent years tweaking the product. Player-drafted squads captained by top vote-getters replaced the traditional East-versus-West format, which is how we got six years of Team LeBron versus Team Curry, Team Giannis, or Team Durant. Then came a target score and the Elam Ending, which have since been discontinued.
Introductions were shortened, halftime shows were minimized, all in the interest of creating an atmosphere for the players that more closely mimicked a real game. The 2024 edition featured an anticlimactic return to East versus West, while 2025 produced a four-team tournament consisting of Chuck's Global Stars, Kenny's Young Stars, Shaq's OGs, and Candace's Rising Stars. Seriously.
Along the way, there have been grand proclamations and even locker room pep talks from basketball royalty, including Larry Bird. It's all fallen flat, as it's become quite obvious the league's modern stars want no part of a decent basketball game breaking out Sunday evening. No one's asking players to risk injury or treat the All-Star Game like a postseason contest, but can the league's 24 best players at least be bothered to get into a defensive stance or put a hand up once every two or three possessions?
Against this backdrop, Silver's office has created yet another new format: the United States against the world. Except not really. It's actually the U.S. versus the U.S. versus the world, as this year's All-Star "game" will feature another mini-tournament. The concept is somewhat defensible, as players being split evenly between an American squad and an international one might've left a number of deserving American standouts snubbed.
As much as the rest of the world has caught up to the U.S. at the top of the heap - with an international-born player favored to win MVP for an eight straight year - the U.S. still dominates when it comes to depth. But if the league wanted to maximize its chances of a competitive game between Americans and international players, it's already dropped the ball.
The NBA undoubtedly took inspiration from hockey's 4 Nations Face-Off, which replaced the NHL's 2025 All-Star festivities. However, that rare public relations win for the NHL was due to a variety of factors that can't be replicated. The league took two weeks off to stage the tournament, which saw Canadian, American, Swedish, and Finnish players represent their own countries. Hockey fans also hadn't witnessed a best-on-best international tournament in roughly a decade. Finally, the 4 Nations Face-Off took place during a uniquely tense political period between the U.S. and Canada, leading to an outsized sense of patriotism and bragging rights for the victors of the tournament.
Conversely, the world's greatest American ballers play best-on-best international hoops two out of every four years between the World Cup and Olympics. Add Eurobasket to the mix and the league's proud European stars can represent their countries in three-quarters of their summers. A three-team, one-day tournament featuring USA Stars, USA Stripes, and Team World isn't coming close to matching the stakes of the 4 Nations Face-Off. Thinking otherwise is laughable.
Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic aren't going to transform from the players who care least about the exhibition to suddenly playing with the same sense of pride they would for Serbia and Slovenia, respectively, just because the word "world" is scrawled across their chest.
Unless Wembanyama's desire is really that infectious.
However, as Kevin Durant recently pointed out, Wembanyama made similar comments heading into his All-Star debut last season. "He said that last year too. They (still) said it was the worst All-Star Game that people watched," Durant reminded reporters. "So, we'll see."
We can at least applaud Wembanyama for trying after years of hearing his fellow All-Stars admit they didn't want to be the only players defending or looking like they cared.
Therein lies the issue. Whether it's fear of social media trolling or something else, somewhere along the way, today's generation of stars started believing that there's less honor in showing you care and losing than there is in showing no care at all - that trying and failing is worse than not showing up to compete. As I wrote on this very topic two years ago, where have all the Kyle Lowrys gone? The undersized guard didn't seem to mind whether the other nine players on the court were taking the result seriously when he supercharged the Chicago crowd (and his peers) by taking two charges in crunch time of the 2020 All-Star Game.
Perhaps Wembanyama can do the same this year. If he can actually get today's stars to show some competitive pride Sunday, it might be the freakish Frenchman's most impressive feat yet.
Joseph Casciaro is theScore's lead NBA reporter.
