NBA All-Star Teams Will Now Be Picked By Captains Instead Of By Conference

ESPN- The NBA All-Star Game will switch formats this season, as two captains will select the teams regardless of which conferences the players play in, the league announced Tuesday. The players who win the fan vote from each conference will be the captains.

There will still be 12 players selected from each conference for the game in Los Angeles on Feb. 18. Five players from each conference will be selected as starters with fan vote being worth 50 percent, player vote worth 25 percent and media vote 25 percent. Seven reserves for each team will be picked by each conference’s head coaches. The new system will enable players from each conference to play against each other and allows current teammates to face off. Depending on the makeup of the teams, it is possible players voted in as starters may not actually start the game.

YES YES YES A MILLION TIMES YES!!! Complaining about All-Star games is one of the oldest traditions in this country and the NBA All-Star Game definitely deserved its fair share of criticism lately. But I cannot love this move more. Don’t get me wrong, there are still going to be plenty of snubs that will drive a bunch of pageviews for sports sites because the East and West still somehow get the same amount of All-Stars despite the fact the East stiiiiinks. I mean the West was already MUCH better than the East and that was before almost all the stars that changed conferences went West this summer so they can be eliminated by the Warriors earlier than The Finals.

But having captains pick the teams instead of the location where the All-Star plays is such a better idea. Nobody wanted to be the last person picked in school, whether it was for playing basketball, dodgeball, or whatever. I may have been a rather large human as a kid, but I wqs still a pretty high draft pick because I got buckets and had moves like this.

But if you ever fell in a draft or were passed over by a captain that was your friend, you would hold a grudge on par with the worst Grudge Dave has to offer. And NBA players just happen to hold the longest, pettiest grudges on the planet Earth. I feel like fights and rivalries will happen simply because some player chose his NBA teammate over his college teammate. Or what if LeBron has a choice between Isaiah Thomas or Lonzo Ball? His pick will likely show his hand of where he intends to play next season. The NBA is the best league when it comes to drama, whether its subtweets, emoji wars, or players demanding trades. An All-Star game selected by captains only adds gasoline to the fire and I am here to watch it all burn.

Also I love this new charity wrinkle:

There will also be a new charity element added to this season’s game. Each team will select a national or Los Angeles-area charity where donations from the game will be directed.

Now the players are either forced to make it look like they are trying or their mentions will get flooded “THEY DON’T EVEN CARE ABOUT CHARITY” tweets from fans as well as long hit pieces written by reporters that spent the night complaining about the lack of a diet soda option in the press box.