The NBA rolled out a new format for its All-Star game at its annual exhibition festivities. While the new format was met with mixed reviews from fans, several players, including Hawks guard Trae Young, weren’t that into it.
On Sunday night, the league unveiled a mini-tournament format that included four teams. Three teams featured NBA All-Stars, while the fourth team was made up of the winners of Friday’s Rising Stars Challenge. Inside the NBA on TNT personalities Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith served as the “honorary general managers” of the three teams and drafted their rosters earlier this month.
The league ran three games (two semifinals and one championship), with the teams playing to a target score of 40 points.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver named Young to his fourth All-Star appearance as an injury replacement for Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo on Team Chuck for the game. Antetokounmpo couldn’t participate because of a left calf strain.
Young finished the tournament with four points, two rebounds and seven assists in 11 minutes of play between two games, though his team ultimately lost to Team Shaq’s OGs in the championship game.
While the night had some upped intensity with the new format, the number of breaks sprinkled throughout the exhibition did not help the players maintain their competitiveness. Young was among the players left feeling frustrated with the disjointed flow of the night.
“No, I didn’t like it at all,” Young told reporters following the game. “I don’t know what the fans’ reaction is and things like that, but I think there’s too many breaks. It’s too long of a break, and guys are over there, like, ready to play and stuff like that. I thought it was very competitive the beginning, but then as the games kept going on, I think it’s just too, too long of breaks, for sure.”
When asked if he was not a fan of the 17-minute stoppage that allowed for a tribute to the “Inside the NBA on TNT” personalities, said it felt longer than that.
“That’s how long it was?” Young said. “It was too long of a break. I didn’t know how long it was, but it felt like it was 30 minutes.”
He added that he preferred the traditional Eastern Conference versus Western Conference model of the All-Star game when asked if there should be an adjustment to the target score.
“I don’t know about this target-score thing,” Young said. “I don’t know about the four teams and all that. Me, I’m a traditional East-West guy. I think it’s, there’s a way to make it incentive. Keep really hard and just do the best players from the East and best players in the West, and they compete, and you try to, I don’t know, you just have pride in protecting your side, so I feel that’s a better way to go about it.”
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