On Wednesday, NBA commissioner Adam Silver teased a potential change to the NBA All-Star Game format that could shake up the outlook of the league and reinvigorate a spectacle that’s been desperately lacking competition.
Appearing on Fox Sports’ Breakfast Ball, Silver was asked about whether the All-Star game could adopt “the concept of USA vs. the World” — in other words pitting the NBA’s best American players against its best foreign players — to which he responded with a resounding “Yes.”
While not official, the idea of a USA-versus-the-World All-Star game has been gaining momentum for years.
The NBA first implemented this format with its Rising Stars Challenge in 2015, as the best rookies and second-year players from America faced off against their foreign counterparts. That concept remained for six years, with the two sides splitting three victories apiece before they disposed of it altogether, introducing different variations of a four-team tournament.
Discussions comparing foreign basketball to the American game heightened during the Paris Olympic Games last summer as Team USA traversed one of the toughest fields of competition, and had battles with the Serbian and French National teams.
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Then, when the 2025 All-Star Game came around, the squads, which were selected by TNT’s Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, incorporated a semblance of American stars teaming up against foreign stars as Barkley drafted a team called the “Chuck’s Global Stars”. Despite that, the game lacked competitive flare and player buy-in — as it has for most of this decade — so projected changes continued to fly around. It also didn’t help the NBA that the NHL, whose schedule runs parallel, had success with the 4 Nations Face-Off, which led to multiple scintillating matchups between Team USA and Team Canada.
“Our Olympic competition was a huge success,” Silver said on Breakfast Ball. “I obviously paid a lot of attention to what the NHL did, which was (also) a huge success.”
With all those factors, a USA-vs-the-World All-Star Game format has become undeniable.
But will it truly increase competition?
That depends on the players. Do they buy-in, and can the teams be equal enough to produce an exciting close game?
Let’s take a look at the potential rosters:
Team World
Starters
G: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada)
G: Luka Doncic (Slovenia)
F: Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece)
F: Victor Wembanyama (France)
C: Nikola Jokic (Serbia)
Reserves
Pascal Siakam (Cameroon), Karl-Anthony Towns (Dominican Republic), Alperen Sengun (Turkey), Franz Wagner (Germany), Domantas Sabonis (Lithuania), Ivica Zubac (Croatia), Jamal Murray (Canada)
None of this is official, as Silver said, so the stipulations for this exercise exclude any player who’s played for Team USA. So, even though Joel Embiid was born outside the USA, he wasn’t included on this team. With that said, six of the last seven NBA MVPs came from players on this hypothetical Team World. Those superstars would headline a strong starting lineup, which would be rounded out by the best NBA’s prospect since LeBron James, in Wembanyama, and the 2024 Western Conference Finals MVP in Doncic. Team World’s bench, though, could be an issue as the depth of American talent buzzing throughout the NBA seemingly outweighs the foreign pool beyond its top stars.
Team USA
Starters
G: Stephen Curry
G: Anthony Edwards
F: Jayson Tatum
F: LeBron James
C: Anthony Davis
Reserves
Tyrese Haliburton, Jalen Brunson, Donovan Mitchell, Kevin Durant, Cade Cunningham, Evan Mobley, Devin Booker
All 12 of Team USA’s All-Stars are firmly within the NBA’s top 20 players. Curry and James showed their worth to Team USA while leading it to a gold medal in the 2024 Olympics. Because of that, and their combined eight NBA Finals rings, they’re locks for this starting lineup. (Yes, Jayson Tatum will be recovering from an Achilles tear next season, but this is all hypothetical, anyway.) Then, take your pick of the NBA’s best young guards. That’s where Team USA has the advantage. What it gives up in top-end talent, it makes up for the amount of dominant scorers it has that will attack you in different ways.
As we saw in the Olympics, foreign clubs were highly motivated to take down the almighty Team USA. While a gold medal won’t be on the line here, this All-Star Game format would incorporate that overall pride, and potentially equip Team World with enough talent to actually take down the American stars.
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