INDIANAPOLIS — Right now, the janitorial staff at the NBA office in New York is wheeling the dry-erase board out of the closet and giving it a once over with a wet rag. It's time to draw up yet another new idea to save the league’s All-Star Game.
On Sunday night in Indianapolis, the 73rd edition of the NBA’s annual February classic reverted back to the traditional format of East versus West and four, 12-minute quarters. The changes, switching back from years of team captains picking sides, and an untimed, targeted scoring system in the fourth quarter to determine the winner – didn't work.
The game, won by the East, 211-186, was still a listless walk-through of less than no defense and mindless chucking of 3s from as far away as behind the half-court line.
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The Athletic NBA Staff
All-Star player poll
Too much scoring? Clippers or Celtics? Joker or Embiid?
The Athletic again put on its collective hard hat, grabbed a lunch pail and jumped head first into All-Star media day to canvas players on who’s the NBA’s best player, what about the league needs to change and more.
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As if Sunday's defenseless debacle wasn’t bad enough, with the East winning 211-186 and the Milwaukee Bucks’ Damian Lillard taking MVP honors with a 39-point performance in which he hit 11 of 23 3s, it was made worse by the revelation that it was more intentional than it was organic.
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Here's what West All-Star Paul George had to say about All-Star Weekend in the city where he got his NBA start and competing alongside Clippers running mate Kawhi Leonard in Sunday's game.
The Athletic NBA Staff
Here's what West All-Star Steph Curry had to say about the All-Star game being in San Francisco next year.
High scoring NBA All-Star Game raises competitiveness concerns once again
INDIANAPOLIS — Right now, the janitorial staff at the NBA office in New York is wheeling the dry-erase board out of the closet and giving it a once over with a wet rag. It’s time to draw up yet another new idea to save the league’s All-Star Game.
On Sunday night in Indianapolis, the 73rd edition of the NBA’s annual February classic reverted back to the traditional format of East versus West and four, 12-minute quarters. The changes, switching back from years of team captains picking sides, and an untimed, targeted scoring system in the fourth quarter to determine the winner – didn’t work.
The game, won by the East, 211-186, was still a listless walk-through of less than no defense and mindless chucking of 3s from as far away as behind the half-court line. League executive Joe Dumars’ edict from October that the All-Stars simply had to play harder was ignored like a Sunday morning alarm clock following an all night, All-Star Saturday rager.
KAT: "I just wanted to cherish this moment and make the most of it. I didn’t know it was going to be 50. I thought it was maybe going to be more like 15. God was good. Sunday, and was blessed to be in this situation."
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Haliburton falls just short of MVP honors in Indiana
Tyrese Haliburton never explicitly said he wanted to win the NBA All-Star Game MVP on Sunday. But with the game in his team’s city and having earned his first All-Star Game start, Haliburton quickly made himself the early favorite for the award.
The Pacers guard drilled his first five 3s to elicit a thunderous roar from a Gainbridge Fieldhouse crowd he’s wowed several times before. He finished with 15 points and two assists in the first quarter of the Eastern Conference’s eventual 211-186 victory over the West.
“I was gonna keep shooting until I missed,” said Haliburton, who entered the All-Star break nursing a left hamstring injury. “But I think (I was) just having fun, playing basketball. I didn’t know how many minutes I was gonna play, didn’t know how my leg would feel. But I felt good.”
Haliburton played 27 minutes and poured in 32 points, six assists and seven rebounds in a game where both teams seemed allergic to defense. However, Haliburton’s performance wasn’t enough for the two-time All-Star to take home MVP. That honor belonged to Bucks star Damian Lillard, who also made his first All-Star Game start and drilled 11 3-pointers en route to a team-high 39 points.
Despite being beat out by Lillard, Haliburton still wore a huge smile after completing a jam-packed schedule as the league’s unofficial All-Star Weekend host. The Pacers, who are in sixth place in the East and are eyeing their first playoff berth since 2020, will resume their season Thursday at home against the Detroit Pistons. Gainbridge Fieldhouse will be back to normal by then, which Haliburton looks forward to, but he was thrilled to soak in being at the center of the basketball universe for a few days.
“There was a lot of energy in the building, a lot of energy for Pacers fans,” Haliburton said of Sunday's game. “There’s a lot for us to be excited about.”
Jaylen Brown has criticized the All-Star game for being uncompetitive in the past. Here's what he had to say about the players talking to each other about making it better.
"I'm not sure how successful that was, but there were definitely some discussions and I guess guys are trying to figure out how to do that at the same time of having fun, being safe, being injury free. But I guess more solutions need to be had to figure that out."
Jaylen Brown said he wanted to see Tyrese Haliburton get the MVP as the hometown star.
LeBron James said postgame that the idea of too much scoring such as tonight’s 211-186 All-Star Game requires “a deeper dive into a conversation of how we can shore up this game. Obviously, from a player’s perspective, it’s fun to get up and down, but at the end of the day, our competitive nature don’t like to just be able to have free-flowing scoring like that. The good thing that came out of tonight was that none of the players were injured, or came out of the game unscathed, how they were before the game. So, it’s a deeper conversation.”
It hits different when you see it on the scoreboard.
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The Elam Ending Target score — in which the game ended after one team reached 24 more points than the winning team had after three quarters — shielded teams from reaching 200 in the All-Star game previous few years. So make no mistake, we’ve been headed this way this entire decade.
That was dreadful. Again.
I am beginning to think this game is irredeemable. Everyone knows what the problem is, but no one seems in any particular hurry to solve it. I’m not sure why the notion of even minimal defensive effort seems to be beyond this generation of All-Stars. But there’s no reason to continue this game if the players can’t give more of a damn than this.
2024 NBA All-Star Game Kobe Bryant MVP Award: Milwaukee's Damian Lillard in East's 211-186 win over West.
East defeats West 211-186
And that’s final. East 211, West 186. The East sets an All-Star Game record for points, and the West sets a record for points for the losing team. Damian Lillard led the way for the East with 39 points and cemented his MVP night with a half-court shot. Jaylen Brown added 36 and Tyrese Haliburton had 32. Karl-Anthony Towns dropped 50 points to lead the West, but most of those came with the game out of reach.
First All-Star game with a team scoring 200 points. And this will be the most points scored by the losing team in All-Star Game history as well.
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Karl-Anthony Towns is straight-up dominating garbage time. He now has 42 points, including a windmill dunk. I’d write out a joke about Towns pouring it on in a game his team lost, but he already did that once this season.
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The West has Anthony Davis at small forward with Jokic, KAT, Luka, and SGA.
Next year’s All-Star Game is at the house Steph Curry built.
