NBA All-Star Game: USA vs. World format favored by some players for future matchups

With the 2025 NBA All-Star Game's pickup tournament-style format viewed as a failed experiment, thoughts on what changes can be made for the 2026 showcase were already circulating among the league's top players.

An idea that appears to be gaining support is a USA vs. World matchup. It probably shouldn't be a surprise that two stars voicing their interest in such a format are the San Antonio Spurs' Victor Wembanyama and Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks.

"I would love to. My opinion is that it's more purposeful," Wembanyama told the Associated Press. "There's more pride in it. More stakes."

The thrill from last year's Paris Olympics basketball tournament is still fresh in the minds of international stars like Wembanyama, who played for France, and Antetokounmpo, who represented Greece in the competition for a gold medal.

"I would love that. Oh, I would love that," Antetokounmpo said. "I think that would be the most interesting and most exciting format. I would love that. For sure, I'd take pride in that.

"I always compete, but I think that will give me a little bit more extra juice to compete."

The Olympic tournament provided spectacular basketball, punctuated by Team USA's 98-87 win over France for the gold medal. Stephen Curry's 3-pointer with 35 seconds left to clinch the win for the U.S. may be considered the greatest shot in Olympic basketball history.

The possibility of that kind of competition, that level of shot-making, that pride in winning is tantalizing to consider for an All-Star game. But is it also a fantasy?

Athletes playing for their respective countries, pursuing immortality as Olympic medal winners, is tremendous motivation. Yet the stakes for a midseason exhibition, even with the premise of attempting to show whether the U.S. or the world has the best basketball talent, are nowhere near as meaningful.

Hockey's 4 Nations Face-Off tournament has also shown what's possible when athletes are playing for their country. Saturday's USA-Canada matchup began with three fights in the game's opening nine seconds. Basketball doesn't feature that kind of rivalry, that level of tension between countries.

If stars with international roots including Wembanyama, Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić, Karl-Anthony Towns, Alperen Şengün and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander take pride in representing the world in an NBA All-Star Game, perhaps that provides hope for a competitive contest. Yet filling out an international roster with 12 All-Star caliber players also present issues.

Ultimately, however, players will still want to avoid injury, especially with little financial incentive at stake. And they'll likely prefer a break in the middle of a long NBA season. That probably won't change even in a USA vs. World format.

"I think that when you get events like this, All-Star Weekend, we don't worry about the competition," <a data-i13n="cpos:13;pos:1" href="https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/4244/">Kevin Durant</a>, <a data-i13n="cpos:14;pos:1" href="https://sports.yahoo.com/nba-adopts-pickup-style-tournament-to-replace-all-star-game-will-it-revive-the-leagues-beleaguered-all-star-weekend-205416884.html">who was critical </a>of the new All-Star format, <a data-i13n="cpos:15;pos:1" href="https://apnews.com/article/nba-all-star-usa-world-36d4361743941a8e1806531ef774011a">told the AP</a>.

"It's just more about celebrating the basketball family and the community around this time. It shows how united we are as a group, as a basketball community, and how we can unite the rest of the world with what we do, as well. It's a cool time."

That mindset is the obstacle the NBA and commissioner Adam Silver continues to face with the All-Star Game. Will any format change overcome that?