bingewatches

The NBA’s seemingly perpetual quest to get players to take the All-Star Game seriously will lead to a format change this year. In a bit of news that was previously reported by Shams Charania of ESPN, the league will modify the way the game is played this year by having a four-team mini-tournament. Three of them will be made up of NBA players, while a fourth will be the winners of the Rising Stars Game, which serves as a model for how this will go.

There’s a lot of moving parts, including the news that the Inside the NBA guys and Candace Parker will serve as general managers, with Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kenny Smith drafting their squads and Parker taking over the Rising Stars winner. It’s certainly a unique idea, but as it turns out, Kevin Durant really is not a fan.

“I hate it, absolutely hate it,” Durant told the press on Tuesday afternoon. “Think it’s terrible. All-Star Game format’s changing, all the formats, terrible, in my opinion. We should just go back to East-West, like, just play a game. I think we’ve been trying to bring that flair back somehow with the All-Star Weekend, but I think we just keep it traditional. We’ll see how this one works, you never know, I might be wrong. I’m just another guy with an opinion, but we’ll see how it works.”

Durant is one of the faces of the league and a guy who is essentially guaranteed to have a spot in the All-Star Game this year, so it’s interesting to see him reflexively say he hates it, say what he prefers, identify that the NBA is trying to fix a problem, and then soften his stance a bit at the end. Still, it’s worth remembering that the last time the NBA made sweeping changes to the All-Star Game — letting players draft teams and adopting the Elam Ending — things were well-received at first but drew criticism pretty quickly, which led to the league scrapping both of those ideas in its never-ending hopes of getting a compelling All-Star Game. Whether or not this is actually a good and sustainable idea or just another thing that will get scrapped in a year or two remains tobe seen.