NBA Leaning Toward International Format In All-Star Overhaul, But Is There Enough Talent?

When NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced in March that the format of the league’s All-Star Game would be pivoting, it seemed pretty natural to infer that there would be an international element.

The announcement came in the wake of an, um, down year for the NBA All-Star festivities. The game itself commanded just 4.7 million viewers, down 13% from the previous season and 80% from past All-Star games. “We’re not there in terms of creating an All-Star experience that we can be proud of and that our players can be proud of,” Silver acknowledged afterward.

Meanwhile, the NHL replaced their All-Star weekend with the Four Nations Face-Off, played between Finland, Sweden, Canada and the United States. The USA-Canada final drew over 16 million viewers worldwide – rivaling last year’s Stanley Cup Finals Game 7. That’s good business.

For the NBA, which is already playing its 2026 All-Star Game during the Winter Olympics, an international lean is natural. The game will also be played at Intuit Dome, the location of the 2028 Summer Olympics.

“We’ll be competing in the arena at Intuit, where the basketball competition will take place in the 2028 Olympics,” Silver said. “So I think all of those factors, when they come together, it presents an enormous opportunity for us to do something with an international competition instead of the traditional All-Star formats that we’ve used.”

So what will that competition look like?

About 70% of all NBA players are American, so a tournament representing several disparate nations, like the NHL’s, is likely off the table. Byron Spruell, the NBA’s president of league operations, remarked specifically on “formats that lean into this idea of international play, to some extent leaning a little bit on this idea of U.S. versus rest of the world.”

“The USA has more talented players than the rest of the world,” said Nikola Jokic earlier this year. “Europe and the rest of the world has talented players, I think, but the majority of the players are coming from USA.”

In such a consolidated matchup, though, the talent would be close. Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Victor Wembanyama and Luka Doncic are just a few of the probable names for the international roster. It would be difficult to argue there’s a lack of talent there.

The All-Star game is still nearly ten months out, so details likely haven’t been hammered out yet. But it now seems like the format – USA versus the World – has been set. The rest, including the amount of success it’ll have, remains to be seen.

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Article by Katherine Manz