Adam Silver Is Taking A Page Out Of The NHL's Playbook And Confirms We're Getting 'USA vs The World' In The 2026 All Star Game

David Dow. Getty Images.

David Dow. Getty Images.

If there's one thing Adam Silver loves, it's trying new shit. Granted, the majority of the time he's creating things that nobody really asked for, but he's certainly not shy about thinking outside the box and doing what he can to create new ideas. Sometimes they flop, other times they end up not being so bad. Remember all the pushback about the Play In? I think most objective fans will tell you now that we've seen it in action for the last few years, it's not the worst idea ever. It hasn't completely deterred tanking (newsflash: nothing will), but it does make the last few weeks of the NBA's regular season more interesting, which was part of why it was created in the first place.

I do think we're still TBD when it comes to the In-Season Tournament, but that's something that is going to take years and years to become a tradition and a "thing" that people care about. As long as the Larry O'Brien trophy still exists, the In-Season Tournament trophy is never going to be seen on the same level, despite what might happen in international soccer. The new full color court idea has been mostly hit or miss (much better in Year 2 imo), and while nobody asked for that tournament, I'm also not exactly the target demo for that idea since I'm watching every game every night anyways. To the casual fans, maybe it helps draw them in.

Silver has also decided that, in addition to making changes for the real games during the year, he's also doing whatever he can to save the NBA's All Star Weekend, which includes trying some wacky shit. How's he doing with that challenge? Not great. We saw the idea of players drafting their teams. We saw the Elam Ending idea (not awful), we saw the tournament idea this past season (meh), and frankly I'm not sure the league will ever be able to solve the problem of players not playing hard and giving a shit until the final few minutes. Fans want that game to basically be Game 7 of the NBA Finals, and I just don't think we'll ever get there.

Which brings us to Silver's latest idea, which is to take a page out of the NHL's playbook with a 'USA vs The World' approach

As someone who isn't exactly a hockey guy, even I can't deny how electric the 4 Nations tournament was, and it's not surprising that while that tournament was going on there were a lot of people who pitched the idea of the NBA adopting it for their All Star Weekend. As we see, Adam Silver is clearly also one of those people. 

I will say, I think Silver and the league will be disappointed if they are expecting the exact same level of effort of the players and the overall reaction to the idea as we saw in the NHL version. There was real beef that went into why the 4 Nations tournament was so fun and how hard the players play, and in the NBA there really isn't that same level of beef between the US players and the international players. I suppose maybe they're banking on this just being the Olympics-Lite which could be fun, but I do have questions as to how this would all work.

Would players who normally wouldn't be deserving of an All Star nod get the spot because they need to fill out the rosters? 

That kind of defeats the whole purpose of what being an "All Star" should be about. Think about the big man position. Well, most of the All Star bigs are international players, so does this mean a not as good US big gets a spot? Same thing with international guards/wings.

What about players with dual citizenship? Can they decide which side they want to play for, like they can do in the Olympics?

Will they pick 12 players from each conference and then split it up by US/World? Or is it 12 US players and 12 international guys?

Who knows, maybe this idea hits and it's the thing that saves All Star Weekend. I suppose there's no harm in trying and then if it stinks, you scrap it. But what I don't understand is why Silver and the NBA are trying to overcomplicate things when really all they have to do is listen to fans. You know what we want? It's simple.

Give us the normal East vs West matchup where both sides get to wear their original team's jersey. Take us back to the 2000s when everyone said this game was actually good. I don't need weird formats or new ideas, just give us the classics. I think sometimes when you're obsessed with looking for what's "next" you can risk losing the plot, and that's what's happened with the All Star Game in my opinion. 

But like all of his wacky ideas, I'm willing to be open minded and see how this is executed. It could be awesome in theory, so I see no harm in trying it out and seeing if it sticks. Perhaps this could be the thing to get everyone to try, especially since The World roster will be pretty fucking stacked combined with some extra motivation coming off what happened in Paris this past summer.