NBA makes mini-tournament format official ahead of 2025 All-Star Game

LAS VEGAS – As expected, the upcoming NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco will be a mini-tournament of three teams composed of the top 24 players in the league and the team who wins the Rising Stars Challenge.

The new format, announced jointly on Tuesday by the NBA and National Basketball Players Association, will include three games — two semifinals and the championship — in which the winner is the team to reach 40 or more points first. There is a prize money pool of $1.8 million, with the champion team earning $125,000 per player.

The selection of the league’s top stars will not change. Twelve players from each conference will be named All-Stars, with fans, media and players voting on the five “starters” and the seven reserves from each conference decided by coaches.

Those players will then go into a pool for picking by TNT’s three analysts — Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal — who are serving as general managers for the three All-Star teams. They will divide the teams into three groups of eight All-Stars on Feb. 6 before TNT’s weekly doubleheader.

Honorary general manager for the Rising Stars team is another Turner Sports analyst, Candace Parker. The Rising Stars Challenge takes place on the Friday of All-Star weekend; the All-Star tournament is on Sunday, Feb. 16 at Chase Center.

The coaches for the All-Star Game will come from the staff of the first place team in each conference as of Feb. 2. The head coach from each first-place team will coach an All-Star team, an assistant from one of the staffs will coach the Rising Stars champion and another assistant will coach the remaining All-Star team.

In November, The Athletic reported that commissioner Adam Silver’s office was consulting with players, including the Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry, on changing the All-Star Game again in another attempt to make the event more competitive. Last year’s All-Star Game in Indianapolis set a new record for points scored — and that wasn’t a good thing, as players on both teams simply didn’t play with any effort whatsoever on defense.

“With the elephant in the room being us competing, them trying to shake things up is expected and makes sense,” said Oklahoma City star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is a two-time All-Star. “But at the end of the day, it’s going to come down to whether the players want to go at it, and I would love to see that. Love to be a part of that for sure, and hopefully it happens.”

Fan voting for All-Stars will begin on Dec. 19. There were no changes announced to All-Star Saturday programming, but it is expected Curry and WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu, who is from the Bay Area, will engage in a shooting competition for the second consecutive All-Star Saturday.

This story will be updated.

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(Photo: Kyle Terada / USA Today)