Adam Silver and the NBA front office stressed the importance of effort during the 2024 All-Star Game as well as in future events. The game has lost some of its luster over the past few years, with defense at a minimum and game action looking more like a layup line than anything that people would tune in for 3 hours to watch. But things didn’t go quite the way that the league had planned on Sunday night.

Criticism Of NBA All-Star Game Getting Louder

There were scoring records broken throughout the evening. For the first time in All-Star Game history, a team scored 200+ points, as the Eastern Conference beat the Western Conference by a score of 211-186. It was the highest combined total ever, beating out the previous high by nearly 25 points, and the two sides combined to shoot 168 three pointers on the evening.

The reception was not good. Fans watching on the television broadcast got bored, and like during the Dunk Contest on Saturday night, fans in the stadium began filing out long before the action was over.

The lack of effort didn’t go unnoticed by the fans and the media:

It’s really simple: if you don’t care, neither do we.

— Scott Van Pelt (@notthefakeSVP) February 19, 2024

ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt obviously felt strongly enough about the inadequate product, and known basketball lover Bill Simmons wasn’t happy about what he had to witness, either.

It’s funny that we spend so much time on All Star Starters/Subs/Snubs and then the game always sucks ass.

— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) February 19, 2024

Players Get In On The Action, Too

But it wasn’t just the onlookers who noticed that things weren’t as eventful as they used to be. LeBron James said that it was something that the league “needs to figure out”, and Anthony Davis said that the most entertaining part of the night was watching the hype teams do their trampoline dunks in between quarters and during timeouts.

Anthony Edwards, one of the up-and-coming players in the NBA and a guy who should be a perennial All-Star for years to come, had the following to say:

“For me, it’s an All-Star Game, so I will never look at it as being super competitive. It’s always fun. I don’t know what they can do to make it more competitive. I don’t know. I think everyone looks at it … it’s a break, so I don’t think everyone wants to come here and compete.”

The All-Star Game came on the heels of an All-Star Saturday Night that also received some criticism. While there was a nice, added wrinkle with the 3-point contest between Steph Curry and Sabrina Ionescu, the Dunk Contest, which is seen as the crown jewel of the evening, was a lackluster event.