In big NBA moments, good or bad, the buzz throughout wireless signals and social media will be palpable. Group chats will blow up with commentary, highlights and opinions. Your preferred social media platform will be flooded with comments about what’s going on. The building hosting the events will be loud and palpably excited.
The 2026 All-Star Game(s) had everything the NBA has been begging its players for over the last few years. There was pride in where the players come from. There was pride in a lot of defensive possessions that probably resulted in more blocked shots in the first 24 minutes of the All-Star Game(s) on Sunday than we’ve seen in the last five years. Maybe more. We had a game-winner in overtime in the first game. We had a game-winner at the buzzer in the second game. We had a game-tying attempt in the third game keep the World All-Stars from competing for the All-Star championship.
Even with the championship game between both sets of USA All-Stars being a blowout because the old guys got tired, the product was a massive victory for the NBA in trying to make the All-Star Game matter in a way it used to. So why doesn’t anybody seem to care?
Even outside your own personal bubble, the vibe around consumption of the All-Star Game was really odd. The Intuit Dome might be the most impressive basketball venue that has ever existed. It’s gorgeous on the inside, has the coolest video board you can imagine, and everything is designed to give you a good look at the action on the floor while keeping you in your seat as much as possible. And yet, the building was relatively quiet for most of Sunday night, even with great basketball action in front of it. It was riddled with empty seats throughout all three nights of action when you rope Rising Stars on Friday into the mix.
There could be plenty of reasons for that. Because of the Winter Olympics and NBC tying its coverage of the All-Star festivities Saturday and Sunday night to leading into the Olympic broadcasts, we had odd start times both days. Instead of a primetime 5 p.m. local time and 8 p.m. on the East Coast, the All-Star Saturday Night and the All-Star Game(s) on Sunday were at 2 p.m. local and 5 p.m. ET both days. That’s pretty early for basketball action most weekends, and it’s reasonable to think the crowd could have been affected by that. At the same time, if the action in front of you is good, then why would it matter what time of day it is?
Saturday night had great events for the 3-point contest and the Shooting Stars competition. Even the dunk contest had a good showdown between Keshad Johnson and Carter Bryant in the final, even if Johnson ended up kind of winning by default. I would also imagine many of you just read that last sentence and asked yourselves, “Who?” Not exactly household names in the mix, but that wasn’t a problem when guys such as Harold Miner, Isaiah Rider and Dee Brown won it in the 1990s.
Maybe it’s the crowd themselves? The NBA All-Star venue is chock-full of corporate favors and sending tickets to people that want to be seen there versus wanting to be there for the on-court action. Such is life in a billion-dollar industry event. However, there were so many empty seats Friday and Saturday night/day that it would have been worth it to the NBA to bring in a bunch of area students to fill the seats. Get energy in the building of humans who are openly wowed by what’s happening, rather than people mildly interested in interrupting their business conversations in order to applaud.
To that point, have you ever seen a stadium or arena refuse to do “the wave” during a game? I need to make it clear in no capacity would I ever stick up for “the wave,” but we watched the arena try to urge the crowd into “the wave” on Sunday between games. The crowd straight-up refused, essentially sticking a big, collective middle finger to quickly standing up to raise their arms before sitting back down to their nachos. I don’t know if I’ve seen a crowd less engaged in that capacity.
They did like some of the action, but it was never loudly appreciated from the stands down to the court. That adoration was far more reserved. According to The Athletic’s reporting, the league and its teams control about half the crowd tickets, and the other half goes on sale for the public. Again the corporate-ification of these events, along with price points on resale tickets, is giving the vibe an uphill battle in that respect.
NBC did a great job on the broadcast, but maybe the timing in conjunction with the Olympics airing hurt things. Maybe it was the lack of fans, or fervent fans, in the crowd that left an odd vibe. I kept seeing stuff about the crowd being so quiet on the broadcasts. You couldn’t even make the argument that at least it was loud in the building, even if it didn’t come through on the broadcast. Because that wasn’t the case.
It will be interesting to see how the NBA conveys the ratings for the game. Will we be given straight viewership ratings from NBC? Will it combine the NBC viewers and the Peacock streamers? Will the NBA also lump in how many views and shares they had across all social media platforms? The further we get away from just straightforward NBC viewership will signal to the media and public that the NBA is spinning the numbers to make it sound more positive. My semi-educated guess would be the ratings are low (respective to what you’d get for an over-the-air telecast) for this one, which won’t have anything to do with the product we saw on the floor Sunday. Three-fourths of the All-Star action was phenomenal, before the old guys ran out of steam and buckets in the final 12 minutes.
The reason for any low-ratings expectations?
The league has not built up that trust and credit to commit to watching the product. Years of poor All-Star products, including two years ago when commissioner Adam Silver openly spoke about his disappointment in the trophy ceremony in front of the players, are what leads to any ratings number below expectations. The format helped breed a more competitive game with the fire on the court people are looking for. I’m just not sure the people bothered to trust the NBA to give them a worthwhile product. So many diehard basketball fans I know weren’t even commenting in group chats during the game. A basketball-loving friend of mine told me he didn’t even watch this year and was confused about the format when looking up the scores to see what happened.
The format is straightforward, in theory, if you watched it happen live. It was constantly reiterated on the broadcast and even in the building with what needed to and would happen. I argued with my friend that the product was great and the ratings would not be indicative of that. He argued the ratings were the only measurement that would let us know if it worked. After some back-and-forth about him saying the format was confusing, I had to relent a little bit when I saw Anthony Edwards’ comments after the game. He seemed to dig the format of younger USA All-Stars, older USA All-Stars and World All-Stars being split up to compete in a tournament. He also admitted he thought his team won the first game by reaching 40 points first in a 12-minute game.
That’s the format of the Rising Stars Games, not the All-Star Games. Edwards’ team ended up losing that first game before coming through to win the whole thing. If he’s participating in it and also confused on the format, maybe it’s not as straightforward as some of us truly believed.
All of that leads to an accumulation of confusion, apathy and distrust from the fan base of the NBA into buying into the All-Star format and the renewed competition that is supposed to exist again. That’s why the vibes seem off. You don’t know if you can trust buying in and outwardly showing enthusiasm for it. It might sound silly, but that’s just entertainment consumption, in general, in an overly saturated world of options. Turn on a series and it doesn’t deliver in the first episode? You pass on the rest of it for another option, or something you’ve watched a hundred times. Commit to 2.5 hours of basketball or just wait for the highlights to determine if it would have been worth your time.
The league is battling a lot in bringing things back to the way they were with this event. They invoked nostalgia with NBC’s return and John Tesh’s introduction song, but nostalgia only ropes you in so much. The league has to battle the balance of corporate handshakes versus truer fans getting into the building to provide energy. It has to combat figuring out how to make sure people know the format of what they’re about to watch. The NBA also has to fight against its own recency of slop and disinterest that infected the annual weekend celebration. For now, the feelings and vibes and energy around this exhibition product are way off, and understandably so. More Sundays like this will bring back a lot of what the NBA is aiming for.
Do you trust that this year carries over to the next? And the one after that? The NBA put together an excellent product on Sunday — one they should be proud of owning. The format worked. But the format works until it doesn’t. You can’t keep tinkering and expect the same interest.
So it’s on them to trust this mode and on the players to provide more reasons to believe in it moving forward. Then, you’ll get the energy. Then, you’ll get the ratings without spin. Then, you’ll get the celebration you need.