James Harden, Trae Young give solutions to fix NBA All-Star Game
02/18/2025 05:45 PM
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The 2025 NBA All-Star Game has come and gone, but the vast majority of players came away fairly disappointed with the end result of Sunday’s exhibition. Atlanta Hawks star Trae Young and Los Angeles Clippers star James Harden were just two of the many players who expressed their discontent with the game.
Harden’s team, Team Shaq, defeated Young’s team, Team Chuck, 41-25 in the final game of the three-game mini tournament on Sunday night.
Clippers’ James Harden, Hawks’ Trae Young on fixing NBA All-Star Game
The 74th annual NBA All-Star Game started off strong from a competition standpoint, with Team Chuck defeated Team Kenny Smith in the first game of the night, 41-32. The game had commercial breaks planned around every 15 points, and with a target score of 40 games, the games themselves didn’t last long at all.
Team Shaq then defeated Team Candace Parker in the second game of the first round, 42-35. While that game was going on, Chuck’s team went to the back to stay loose and shot around on the Warriors practice court.
But the commercial breaks between the games felt like an eternity.
“Nah, I didn't like it at all to be honest with you,” Trae Young said of the new NBA All-Star Game format. “I don't know what the fans’ reaction was yet, but it was too many breaks. It was too long of a break. Guys were over there ready to play. I thought it was very competitive in the beginning, but then as the games kept going on, I think it was just too long of a break.”
“It was a little weird,” Clippers’ star James Harden added. “[There were] too many stoppages. I understand why, but we need to find a way to shorten all the stoppage and kind of get the game in flow.
“It’s just too much stopping to where we gotta warm up and get going, then warm up again,” James Harden added. “It’s a lot.”
During the third game, with the Shaq’s team leading Chuck’s 11-1, the NBA took a “halftime” kind of break, which ended up lasting 17 minutes.
“That’s how long it was?” Trae Young asked when told about how long the break in the third game was. “I didn’t know how long it was, but it felt like it was 30 minutes.
“To be honest, I didn’t like it at all. I don’t like the breaks, the games were so short. We can score and they’re trying to extend the game or extend the TV time with breaks and things like that. As a player, you’re trying to stay warm and things like that, so it’s kind of tough to do that. You’ve got a 7-foot-5 guy over there coming off the bench for the first time probably in his life. Sitting 20 minutes is probably not easy for them. It’s tough for me, so I can already understand how they feel. I don’t necessarily know how I felt about that. I feel like there’s a lot of people that felt that way.”
Shaq’s team went on to beat Barkley’s handily in the final round, 41-25, led by All-Star Game MVP Stephen Curry. The Warriors guard scored 12 points, grabbed four rebounds, and nabbed two steals while teammate Jayson Tatum scored a game-high 15 points with three rebounds and two assists.
With each game going to 40 points, the total run time of basketball being played ended up being around 34 minutes.
This year's NBA All-Star Game felt more like a social event than actual basketball being played pic.twitter.com/E6Uy0zHeTu
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) February 17, 2025
“I don’t know about this target score thing, I don’t know about the four teams and all that,” Young continued. “For me, I’m a traditional East-West guy, so I mean I think there’s a way to incentivize it, to make guys compete really hard. Just do the best players from the East, the best players from the West, they compete, and you try to use that pride in protecting your side. It was competitive, but 40 [points] is a quarter in an NBA game. I don’t know, I felt like the fans would want to see us playing more rather than some little shows in between breaks.
“I mean, for me, it’s easy. Make it East vs. West, and then winning team gets a lot and losing team gets nothing or a little. I guarantee you guys will go out there and play.”
When asked about returning to the East vs. West idea, James Harden said he would like to see a game featuring the American stars against the World’s stars.
“That might work,” the Clippers’ guard said. “Another idea is USA vs. the World. So, you know, there’s other ways you can figure it out, but the format was just too much going on, stopping the game, starting the game, I think it should just be East vs. West with the best 24 players.”
Joining Harden in the “USA vs. the World” idea was Milwaukee Bucks’ star Giannis Antetokounmpo.
“Going back to the US vs. the World, that would be an exciting format,” Antetokounmpo added. “I feel like that would make people play hard and hopefully we can get it back to where it was.”
It would be tough to envision the NBA going immediately away from the tournament format after just one season, as a few minor tweaks like increasing the target score to 60 points and reducing the amount of breaks could very easily make for a better game experience.
But the players have also been very vocal about wanting changes like going back to the East vs. West format or trying the USA vs. World format.
By next season, Trae Young, James Harden, and the rest of the league’s biggest stars will surely give their input to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and the league office on how to improve the NBA All-Star Game. Given that the event is coming to Intuit Dome and Los Angeles/Inglewood next season, there may be even more pressure to get it right.
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