Opinion | The NBA should take All-Star notes from the NHL

As seen in volume 113, issue #9 of The Collegian

The NHL recently finished up their All-Star break. They set up a round-robin tournament, in which players from Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the United States were placed on their respective national teams. According to the NHL, the average viewership of the 7 game tournament was 6.3 million viewers, with the Canada-United States Championship match having the highest number of viewers with just over 16 million.

The NBA also finished its All-Star break, holding events such as the three-point contest, slam dunk contest, and skills challenges. Their All-Star game format consisted of a 4 team tournament; 3 teams with 8 All-Stars apiece, and 1 team full of young “rising stars.” The NBA only averaged 4.7 million viewers throughout the All-Star tournament.

The NBA fills the weekend with unnecessary, money-grabbing moves that make even the most avid fans uninterested, then wonder why viewership is down. They look for new formats to solve their problems, but have more commercial time than actual gameplay. Instead of focusing so much on advertising and fan viewership, the NBA needs to take a page out of the NHL’s book.

The NHL prioritized their players’ desires for their Four Nations tournament. They didn’t look for celebrities to invite to the games or new “skills challenges.” Instead, they focused on what would drive the players to play hard. Canadian and United States NHL players throughout the broadcast were speaking about the championship match-up as if it was the most important game of their life. The NHL gave their players something to play for: pride.

Fans want to see the multi-millionaires on the rink and the court care. The NBA continues to look for secret formulas to make All-Star weekend interesting instead of prioritizing their players’ interests.

The 2020 NBA All-Star game is proof that this idea would work. After the death of Kobe, NBA players felt motivated to play hard to win the Kobe Bryant MVP award, named for a notoriously prideful, hardworking player. Fans were on the edge of their seats watching Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James battle in the last seconds of the game. The players had pride in what they were playing for, and the result speaks for itself.

Obviously, we do not want a tragedy to motivate NBA players to try hard in the All-Star game. This is just proof of what player pride can mean for the NBA in their All-Star game. Whether that’s by borrowing the NHL’s idea and having a US vs International All-Star game, or something else entirely, it’s clear that the NBA needs to prioritize players if they want successful All-Star games.