The NBA doesn’t know what to do with its All-Star Game, that’s the reality. In February of this year, they tried a new format, a mini-tournament with four teams and three games, which resulted in a poor rating of 4.7 million viewers on average, 13% less than in 2024.
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Therefore, now the main basketball league in the world will attempt a new change for the 2026 “All-Star Game”: a game between the United States national team and the best players from other nationalities in the NBA.
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What will the new NBA All Star Game be like?
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a conversation with Fox Sports that he paid “a lot of attention to what the NHL did,” the North American hockey league, in an effort to make the All-Star weekend more attractive. The weekend has been losing strength due to various format changes.
“What better time to present a United States vs the world match?”, stated Silver, who also celebrated that the match, which will be on February 16, will coincide with the Winter Olympics in prime time, which will also be broadcasted by NBC.
In February of this year, during the week of its “All-Star Game,” the NHL organized a Four Nations tournament due to the large number of foreign players. The teams that competed were the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Finland, with a final match between the Americans and Canadians amidst controversy over Donald Trump’s desire to annex his northern neighbors.
Canada’s victory over the United States in overtime had an audience of 9.3 million viewers, a record for any NHL event in decades.
The NBA commissioner recalled that, in the past Olympic Games of Paris 2024, the United States had very exciting matches against Serbia and France.
In the last seven years, the NBA MVP award has gone to a foreign player, such as Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), Nikola Jokic (Serbia), and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada). Also standing out are Luka Doncic (Slovenia), who was transferred to the Los Angeles Lakers this year, and Victor Wembanyama (France), the 2024 Rookie of the Year.