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- The 2026 All-Star Game used a failed “USA vs. World” format.
- High-value contracts discourage stars from risking injury in exhibition games.
- Marquee players played minimal minutes to satisfy basic participation requirements.
- The new round-robin structure failed to increase competitive intensity among players.
- All-Star prize money remains insufficient to motivate elite, high-earning athletes.
With five formats in nine years, the NBA has searched far and wide for an All-Star Game format that attracts fans’ attention and star players’ participation. It hasn’t worked, and the 2026 “USA vs. World” Round Robin All-Star Game will be remembered as one of the worst of all time.
While this new format didn’t save the All-Star Game, it unearthed the underlying problem with the exhibition as it relates to NBA player contracts, incentives, and brand deals. But to understand this problem, we have to understand the format.
Until the 2018 NBA All-Star Game, the league hadn’t touched the stable “East vs. West” format. It was 66 years (1951–2017) of history, records, and sportsmanship. However, as players’ contracts began to balloon into the five-year USD$285 million “Super Max” era, the risk of injuries started to outweigh the reward. Dwyane Wade gave Kobe Bryant a hard foul in the third quarter of the 2012 game, which caused Bryant to sustain a broken nose and a concussion. Other exhibition injuries, such as Paul George’s horrific compound fracture of his leg in 2014, forced players to think twice about the effort they gave in these games.
Format Changes
The NBA began experimenting with formats in 2018, starting with The Captain’s Draft (2018–2019), followed by the Elam Ending Era (2020–2023), and then returning to the East vs. West (2024) format, which many note as the death of the All-Star Game, as the 211-186 final score indicated a complete lack of defense.
When the NBA introduced a “Four-Team” Experiment (2025), it was a desperate bid to fix the game that scrapped the single 48-minute game. It didn’t spark interest as the “Rising Stars” team felt out of place among established veterans. So what did they do? The league created a “USA vs. World” Round Robin with 12-minute mini-games (quarters), followed by a Championship Game between the top two seeds. It saw Team USA Stars vs. Team USA Stripes vs. Team World.
On paper, it makes sense. It’s an Olympics-style exhibition that could attract global audiences who wanted to see their best talent beat the USA at their own game, but it failed miserably for one key reason. The stars of the World team were injured or nursing a minor injury with a minute restriction. But that didn’t stop them from keeping their name on the roster or from meeting their bare-minimum participation requirements.
Incentives Issue
NBA players’ contracts are among the richest in all of sports. Base salaries are guaranteed, but incentives are often paid to players for making an All-NBA Team, winning the NBA Championship, or reaching other career milestones. Moe Harkless famously had a $500,000 incentive to maintain a 35% 3-point percentage by the end of the season, and once he hit that milestone, he didn’t take a single three for the last five games of the season. The same could apply to the participation in the NBA All-Star Game, and that’s before we even talk about the brand deals associated with being named an All-Star.
Most current NBA contracts were signed before this specific three-team format was finalised, so players were only required to participate in one game. Previously, in the old single-game format, “participating” meant playing in the only game available. Here, in the 2026 Round-Robin Format, the definition of “the event” is satisfied the moment they check into the first game (Team World vs. Team USA Stars). They don’t have to play the second game.
It was a slap in the face to NBA fans when Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic checked in for 5:05 minutes in the first game, but then sat out the entire Championship game. They went on to lose 48-45 on a Kawhi Leonard buzzer beater.
It’s impossible to know the specifics of each player’s contract, so we’re shooting from the hip with this theory. However, if their NBA contract doesn’t pay them a bonus for participating in the All-Star Game, their brand deals with Jordan, Converse, and many others could.
There’s No Fix
It’s sad, then, that the NBA All-Star Game has become one massive (incentivised) multi-million-dollar participation award.
Players’ prize money for the winning team (roughly USD$150,000 per player in this new format) is not enough to outweigh the risk. The reality is that the NBA offers no financial reward for winning the tournament that outweighs the risk of injury, and until they do, the NBA All-Star Game won’t improve.
With hundreds of millions in guaranteed salary protected by the contract, no agent would advise a client to risk a career-altering injury in a game that creates no value toward their future earnings. It is a case of minimum effort for maximum reward, and don’t blame the player, blame the game.
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