As far as sympathetic figures go, professional sports commissioners are somewhere between tax collectors and people that drive too slowly in the left lane. Still, you have to feel for Adam Silver. This man is trying his best to put out an All-Star Game fans will love, but his efforts are repeatedly thwarted by players who have warped a classic 50 Cent album into “Get rich, then stop trying.”
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There seems to be no way to motivate the best players in the league to put on a competitive All-Star Game, but Stephen A. Smith has an idea: Let national pride get those competitive juices flowing.
Stephen A. advocated on First Take this morning for a “USA vs. the world” format to the All-Star Game. He believes international players will take the game seriously, which will, in turn, make Americans match their level or risk being embarrassed.
Smith referred to Victor Wembanyama and Giannis Antetokounmpo as just two of the international players who would put it all on the line to beat Team USA. The idea makes a lot of sense given how competitive last year’s Summer Olympics were.
“International players are not going to show up against USA players for All-Star weekend and take it lightly.”@stephenasmith wants to see international competition introduced to the All-Star format to boost competition. pic.twitter.com/z7bbuPLbUo
— First Take (@FirstTake) February 17, 2025
“Where they from ain’t gonna allow it, so I would love to see that.”
Stephen A. might be on to something, as “USA vs. the world” has been a tried-and-true formula for other sports.
Would the NBA All-Star Game be saved if it pitted the best Americans against the best international players?
Logistics would need to be worked out, like how to account for about 70 percent of NBA All-Stars being Americans, an issue Adam Silver acknowledged last month. The idea has certainly worked in hockey. The 4 Nations Face-Off, which is going on right now, has been a massive success with competitive games—and multiple fights, as Team USA didn’t take kindly to Canada’s fans booing the national anthem.
Golf’s Ryder Cup is another example of an event that knows how to stir up a patriotic fervor. So is the World Baseball Classic, which had baseball fans riveted all the way down to the final pitch in 2023 as Shohei Ohtani struck out his teammate Mike Trout to win the event for Japan.
If Silver and the NBA could figure out a way to make this work, it could save the All-Star Game from becoming irrelevant. Raising the prize money didn’t help. Letting captains pick sides didn’t work out, and neither did returning the game for one year to an East vs. West showdown. Let’s get Uncle Sam Jackson from Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show and get this thing going.
