2024 NBA All-Star Game Format Explained

The 2024 NBA All-Star Game will take place in February at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, home of the Indiana Pacers. Contenders like the Boston Celtics and plucky underdogs like the Toronto Raptors will try to get their best players into the game’s biggest spotlight.

Adam Silver is always looking to make changes to the NBA All-Star game, as he is trying to strike the perfect balance between trying new things to keep things fresh, maintaining a level of familiarity that fans can gravitate to, and increasing the competitiveness of the product.

This means scrapping some inventions from the last few years in the name of making sure All-Star Weekend returns to the must-see TV event it was back in the 1990s.

2024 NBA All-Star Game Format

The league is returning to their traditional format in 2024. Rather than selecting two captains and letting them pick their own teams in a draft format, the NBA is rolling out their old-school Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference format for the first time since the West won 192-182 in 2017.

The NBA decided to change the format in order to increase the competitiveness of the game, but this suggests that fans are clamoring for the interconference games they grew up watching. Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and Nikola Jokic, could lead the West against Giannis Antteokounmpo, Joel Embiid, and Jayson Tatum’s East.

2023 NBA All-Star Game Elam Ending

The Elam Ending, which was used in All-Star Games from 2020 to 2023, has teams playing to a target score in the fourth quarter rather than playing a set amount of time. In the All-Star Game, teams would need to amass 24 points more than the leading team’s score after the third quarter in a tribute to Kobe Bryant.

The Elam Ending was well received in the first All-Star implementation, but it has fallen out of favor. Despite this, the Elam ending lives on through the NBA G League, which uses it to decide the winner of games in overtime.

Will any Toronto Raptors players make it to the 2024 NBA All-Star Game?

Due to Pascal Siakam’s slow start, Scottie Barnes appears to be the only player who has a non-zero shot of making it to the festivities. If he continues his torrid start to the season, the voters will have a very hard time keeping him out.

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