It’s time for all of us to admit what we already know: The NBA All-Star game stinks. No matter what format or incentive Adam Silver tries to use to influence the players, it will not matter. The players don’t care, and therefore, NBA fans don’t care either.

To be fair, this year’s All-Star weekend was especially bad. It started off with Victor Wembanyama and Chris Paul getting kicked out of the skills competition for breaking the rules. LeBron James then opted out of the game due to injury two hours before it was scheduled to start, leaving no time for the NBA to find a replacement.

The format itself was a complete dud. This is the All-Star game! No disrespect to Jaylen Wells or Keyonte George, but Draymond Green is right. Fans want to see the world’s best players compete against each other, not a Rising Stars team comprised of five rookies and two second-year players. The NBA has changed the format so many times over the last few years that most fans don’t even know what they are watching.

And don’t even get me started on the broadcast. Someone on Reddit tracked every minute of the game’s TV coverage, and the final tally included 42 minutes of actual basketball being played but 80 minutes of advertisements during the 3-hour window.

I don’t want this just to be another article complaining about the All-Star game, but it’s important people understand how far this game has fallen. The NBA went from a record 23 million people watching the All-Star game in 1993 to an average of less than 5 million viewers over the last two years. In fact, the NBA still hasn’t released this year’s TV ratings, deciding to publish social media engagement metrics rather than ordering fast-nationals from Nielsen. That’s when you know the number will be bad.

Last year’s WNBA All-Star game averaged 3.44 million viewers on ABC. I still think the NBA will probably beat that number, but the fact that it’s even close is a concern.

So, what can the NBA do to fix it? Well, everyone seems to have an idea. Switching back to an East vs. West matchup with homecourt advantage in the NBA Finals on the line is probably the most logical solution. The USA vs. the World idea also makes a lot of sense at face value — the NHL replaced its 1.5 million average audience All-Star game with a 4 Nations tournament that saw USA vs. Canada get 10.1 million North American viewers on Saturday night — but that’s a more complicated dynamic to navigate for the NBA.

A USA vs. the World matchup would water down the All-Star game even further, as only 6 of the 26 all-star selections this year were international players. That means the NBA would have to select more international players for the game, removing some of the league’s most popular players while also diminishing the value of the nomination.

This idea only works in the NHL because American players represent 30% of the league, a much smaller number than in the NFL (95%), NBA (75%), and MLB (75%).

Personally, I think Adam Silver should pick a format and stick with it. Many problems over the last few years stem from the constantly changing format. No one knows what to expect, and simple is usually better. If you have to spend 10 minutes explaining how it works to people at the start of the broadcast, you have already lost.

The problem with the NBA All-Star game is that there is no possible incentive Adam Silver can implement to make the players give more effort. Many say that country pride will take over if you do it based on nationality, but hockey is an entirely different animal. NHL players make significantly less money than NBA players, and the 4 Nations tournament is their first international competition in more than a decade, as the NHL didn’t send its players to the Winter Olympics in 2018 or 2022.

On Saturday, there were three fights in the first ten seconds of the USA vs. Canada game. Do you really think LeBron James and Stephen Curry care that much about a USA vs. the World matchup, especially after taking home a gold medal at the Olympics six months ago? The answer is no, although the NBA will probably try it anyway.

If national pride doesn’t work, money is usually the next best option. Adam Silver has already gone down that route with the midseason tournament, and even American Ryder Cup players will be paid $500,000 for this summer’s event at Bethpage Black.

But the NBA has already tried that strategy — and it failed. Despite a prize pool of $1.8 million for this year’s All-Star game, the effort didn’t improve. Even if you multiplied that number by 10, it doesn’t matter. It sounds crazy to say and even more absurd to type, but most NBA All-Stars make over $40 million in annual salary alone. A $10 million prize pool won’t change anything; it will just cost the NBA more money.

The All-Star game’s decline in relevance is a byproduct of the NBA’s success. I know, I know, the NBA is dead! No one is watching anymore! It’s a narrative that should have died long ago. The NBA recently signed an 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal. They are doing just fine — ratings are now essentially flat year over year, and the NFL will eventually use that TV deal as an example when it opts out of its media deals in 2029.

The NBA needs to shift expectations. People only complain about the game because the NBA is telling them they should complain. Adam Silver and the league office are essentially telling on themselves by continuously switching the format and lambasting player effort. Fans wouldn’t typically expect superstar players to take a midseason exhibition seriously, but it doesn’t help when that discourse drives the conversation.

Instead, the NBA should treat the All-Star game like the spectacle it is. Rather than trying to get players to give more effort, which won’t happen for all the reasons I mentioned above, the NBA’s All-Star weekend should celebrate the players and be an entertainment experience for the fans. Many hardcore NBA fans don’t even watch the All-Star game, and it’s primarily an event for the younger generation. Lean into that.

These fans don’t care about lockdown defense; there isn’t much of that during the regular season anyway. They just want to see all of their favorite players on the court at the same time, interacting with each other and having fun in a relaxed environment.

Try to get as many big names as possible in the dunk contest and three-point shootout. Make that the main course instead of an appetizer. Have more concerts, giveaways, guest appearances, and fewer commercials. It wouldn’t hurt to start the game a couple of hours earlier. And the NBA could also bring some legends out on the court while finding creative ways for players to get their competitive juices flowing.

But above all else, the NBA needs to reset expectations, both privately and also publicly. The days of this game averaging over 20 million viewers are over. All-Star weekend is more about what happens off the court than on it. Similar to the Super Bowl, thousands of people who work in sports gather in that year’s host city for meetings, dinners, and business deals. Add an entertaining show for the fans, and suddenly, an average of five million viewers becomes a perfectly acceptable number.

Professional sports are a competition, but that’s not why the NBA is so popular. At the end of the day, these are entertainment products. People watch sports to relax and unwind, a breakaway from the monotony of life. There is a time to be serious, but there is also a time to have fun. The NBA’s problem is that they are in denial about what All-Star weekend is really about — much more of the latter than the former.

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