The NBA has rolled out a new format for how the All-Star Game will be played in the 2024-2025 basketball season
As the new year rolls in, lots of changes have been making headlines in the sports world. One of them has hit the NBA, with a brand-new set of rules for the All-Star Game. The All-Star Game is the main event of All-Star Weekend, as numerous activities are happening throughout the same week-end such as the Rising Stars showcase, as well as three-point and slam dunk contests.
This season, the All-Star Game will be played in San Francisco on Sunday, February 16, 2025 at the Chase Center, the home of the Golden State Warriors. This edition features a four-team, three-game, and one-night tournament setup. It will be organized around three teams of eight All-Stars, and the fourth team will be the victorious contestant of the Rising Stars showcase, highlighting NBAs first and second-year players. Two of the four teams will meet in one semifinal, while the others will meet in the other semifinal. When the winners are announced, those two successful teams will play each other in the championship game. The Rising Stars event will be held on February 14th, 2025, in order to headline for the All-Star event. Once teams are finalized, the winning team in all games will be the first to score 40 points. This is the first time that the NBA All-Star Game will be set around a mini-tournament like this.
With so many talented players within the NBA, which ones will go to the All-Star Game? Who gets to choose who belongs to each team? With these sorts of questions circling around, we start to look at how the voting process works.
Each of the four teams will have eight players and be named for a Turner Network Television (TNT) NBA analyst. The 24 NBA All-Star selections will be divided evenly into three teams, with the rosters being drafted by TNT’s Inside the NBA commentators and honorary team general managers. The following include Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith. Each analyst will make their picks for Team Charles, Team Shaq and Team Kenny live on TNT in the NBA All-Star Draft. The fourth team is picked a little bit differently than the other three teams. In fact, it will be determined based on the winning team of the Castrol Rising Stars annual showcase championship game. This is a showcase of the top first and second-year NBA players, as well as NBA G League standouts, that will take place on Friday, February 14th during NBA All-Star 2025. TNT analyst and WNBA legend Candance Parker will serve as an honorary general manager of the Rising Star champion, otherwise known as Team Candace. As each of the analysts prepare to choose their teams, it now comes down to the voting process.
This voting process determines the 24 NBA All-Stars that will play in each of the teams. Voting will be the same as last year, with five players chosen as starters in each conference will be selected by the fans, having 50% of the vote. Current NBA players will then have 25% vote, as well as a media panel getting the last 25% of that vote. Selected by NBA head coaches, seven other players will be named as reserves in each conference. The four NBA All-Star Game head coaches will come from the coaching staffs of teams with the best regular-season record from each conference through the games played on Sunday, February 2nd. Head coaches from Western and Eastern conferences will respectively coach an NBA All-Star team while an assistant coach from one of those teams will officiate as head coach of the Castrol Rising Stars championship. There will also be an assistant coach from the other staff that will coach the remaining All-Star team.
With voting up in the air, we can possibly expect to see some well-known faces, as projections of who will play are making headlines. For the East starters, we could see Jayson Tatum from the Boston Celtics, recent champion of the NBA 2023-2024 season in the frontcourt, and Giannis Antetokounmpo from the Milwaukee Bucks, also in the frontcourt by having the most fan votes. For the West, we could see Stephen Curry from the Golden State Warriors in the backcourt, as Dallas Mavericks player Luka Doncic suffered from a recent injury that could make him sit out the All-Star Game. This would probably make Curry have a shift in votes, putting him ahead as fans favorite. Another person we could predict to see would be Lebron James from the Los Angeles Lakers at frontcourt, although odds seem to have him as a final starter pick against others, including Kevin Durant from the Phoenix Suns, and Nikola Jokic from the Denver Nuggets.
These four teams that participate in the NBA All-Star Game will compete for a prize pool of $1.8 million, with each of the players getting $125,000. From there, each player of the second-place team will gain $50,000 and then the third and fourth-place teams players will receive $25,000. As February draws closer, we can only imagine how the new tournament style will be for the NBA players, staffs, analysts, and fans.
Edited by Elsa Olano
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