February 16, 2023 By: Mark Knudson

How about US against the World for NBA All-Star format?

Our professional sports leagues have long been searching for a way to make All-Star games – whether they happen in the middle of the season or after – meaningful in some tangible way. Competitive, entertaining…yet not overly risky. Something fans want to see – and advertisers want to sponsor.

Baseball has always had the best All-Star game, and yet MLB still opted to greatly enhance its mid-season classic by adding Home Run Derby and other sideshows.

That continues to work.

The NBA was the first – actually it was the American Basketball Association that birthed it – to offer a sideshow that was almost instantly more alluring than the game itself when the late great Carl Scheer, then the General Manager of the Denver Nuggets, came up with the Slam Dunk Contest in 1976. Early dunk contests featuring the likes of Julius Erving and Michael Jordan were must-see TV.

Not so much in recent years.

Football and hockey have tried various other things too, but without as much success.

As for the games, the NFL’s Pro Bowl is on life-support, the league having opted to stop playing an actual football game and resorting to a carnival-type approach with its star players the week before the Super Bowl. Sideshows alone don’t work, either.

So how can the games be made more compelling without being too risky for the participants? What’s the right format?

Truth is that every game will have risks.

Any time you play an even slightly competitive contest between professional athletes, someone could get hurt, regardless of the format. That’s just something that everyone has to live with if we want to continue to have these kinds of revenue-generating exhibitions. In other words, we just live with it, play the games at take our chances.

MLB is the only one to have never wavered from its and true National League vs. American League format. The others have continuously tried various machinations of roster formation, with the NBA finally just tossing a coin and deciding to go with a “let’s choose sides and play a pick-up game” format that debuts this season.

Odds are it still misses the mark in terms of generating an actual competitive and entertaining basketball game.

What’s most likely is that after this year’s NBA All-Star game turns out to be just another defenseless exhibition of alley-oops and half court three point attempts, Commissioner Adam Silver and his crew will go back to the drawing board. Hopefully, they can take a look at the current landscape and makeup of NBA rosters and elect to borrow an idea first used by the NHL that could actually put some teeth into their future events:

It’s time for U.S. against the World.

With the proliferation of international standout players now becoming key cogs on every NBA roster, why not pit the best of USA basketball against an All-Star squad made up of the international stars?

Imagine this: LeBron James leading a team of Americans that could include (without injuries impacting the rosters) Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum, Donovan Mitchell, Ja Morant, Damian Lillard, Kyrie Irving, Paul George and more.

On the World’s side you’d have two-time reigning league MVP Nikola Jokic leading a team that includes another two-time MVP in Giannis Antetokounmpo, wanna-be MVP Joel Embid, future MVP Luka Doncic, Lauri Markkanen, Domantas Sabonis, Pascal Siakam, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and others.

There would be obvious advantages – like national pride playing a role in the competitiveness of the game (just think about international competitions like the Olympics, for example) and the heightened fan interest that would be sure to follow. There would also be not so obvious pluses like a much needed improvement in the selection process. Rosters would need to be constructed in such a way that teams could match up and have some semblance of a playing rotation. The current roster selection process is a head-scratching grab bag approach that leaves deserving players on the sidelines.

Coaching would matter, too. This year, Denver’s Michael Malone and Boston’s Joe Mazzulla will have nothing much to do other than watch the clock and make sure everyone gets equal minutes. Not knowing who’s on your roster until right before tipoff eliminates any chance to formulate any sort of coaching strategy, even for late game situations.

In other words, contrary to what we’ll see this year, a USA v The World tilt would be a real, actual competitive (and thereby far more entertaining) basketball game, and not something you’d see at a high-end YMCA on a summer afternoon.

Being chosen an All-Star should matter. Earning the chance to be an All-Star coach should matter…and trying to win the game should matter, too. It does when you are playing for your country.