Next February’s 75th NBA All-Star Game is to feature a three-team round robin tournament with two teams of US players and a world squad of global talent, the league announced on Tuesday.
The tournament, consisting of four 12-minute contests, is to be hosted on Feb. 15 next year by the Los Angeles Clippers at Intuit Dome, which opened last year in Inglewood, California.
Two teams would play in the first game, with the third team facing the winner of the opener, then the loser of the opener.
Photo: AP
The championship game is to match the top two teams based on records or point differential.
Each team will have a minimum of eight players, so the All-Star selection process to determine 24 players — 12 from each conference — will change only so that all players will be chosen regardless of position.
“I actually love it,” retired NBA star Carmelo Anthony said. “The players are used to positionless basketball. You can see five guards on the court. I love the idea of the best players getting chosen in the All-Star Game.
“It brings excitement. That brings a lot of culture back to the game. All-Star should be the best players no matter what position,” Anthony added.
Another retired NBA star, Vince Carter, said qualifying could be tough for talented big men with multiskilled playmakers starring for many clubs.
“Now that big man sits there, and it’s a lot harder,” Carter said. “Harder for a big man to have an opportunity, because there are a lot of great guards in the league.”
“It’s going to be tough for that big man to crack that 24,” he said.
Five players to be honored as “starters” will be selected from both the Eastern and Western conferences with fans having 50 percent of the vote, players having 25 percent and a media panel having 25 percent.
Seven players from each conference named as reserves will be selected by NBA head coaches.
The process for assigning US players to one team or the other would be determined at a later date, the league said.
Should the All-Star voting not result in 16 US players and eight international players being chosen, NBA commissioner Adam Silver will select additional All-Stars to join either group to reach that minimum, which could give one roster more than eight players.
Last year’s NBA All-Star Game included such international players as Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a Canadian star and reigning NBA Most Valuable Player; French center Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio; Serbian center Nikola Jokic of Denver; Greek center Giannis Antetokounmpo of Milwaukee; forward Pascal Siakam of Indiana; and Turkish center Alperen Sengun of Houston.
A runner who stopped during a marathon in China to pose doing the splits and another who hoarded energy gels have been banned for two years, the local athletics association said yesterday. The incidents happened during Sunday’s marathon in Sichuan Province’s Chengdu and were widely shared online. Videos showed a female runner stopping suddenly and dropping to the ground in the splits position, holding up her arms in a heart shape as she apparently posed for a photograph. She “committed obstructive fouls during the race, affecting the safe participation of other runners,” the Sichuan Athletics Association said in a statement, which identified
Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli yesterday vowed to “keep raising the bar” after winning the Japanese Grand Prix to become the youngest driver in Formula One history to lead the championship standings. The 19-year-old Italian took advantage of a mid-race safety car to jump into the lead after a dreadful start from pole position, crossing the line ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Antonelli’s Suzuka victory came two weeks after the first grand prix win of his career in China, and sent him top of the championship standings after three races, nine points ahead of team-mate George Russell. Mercedes are struggling to
Liverpool star Mohamed Salah on Tuesday said that he would leave the English club at the end of the Premier League season, marking an earlier-than-planned departure for one of the club’s greatest-ever scorers and soccer’s biggest names. The 33-year-old Egypt forward, who has scored 255 goals in 435 appearances for Liverpool, “reached an agreement” to quit the team a year before his contract was due to expire, the Premier League champions said. Salah’s form has dipped in his ninth year at Anfield, to such an extent that he was dropped for a stretch of games late last year — leading to the
There were some big games to be played yesterday in the NBA, with the Atlanta Hawks to play the Detroit Pistons in a matchup pitting a Hawks team who are rolling against a Pistons team trying to lock up the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed. The Oklahoma City Thunder were to play the Boston Celtics, a showdown featuring the two most recent champions, while the Houston Rockets faced the Minnesota Timberwolves, a game that could factor mightily into Western Conference seeding. Elsewhere, the Washington Wizards were to play the Utah Jazz, with the Wizards on a 16-game slide visiting against a team
RSS