The 2025 All-Star Game is in the books, and once again, everyone seemed to be complaining about the league’s new format for the festivities. Boston Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum wasn’t nearly as harsh as some of his peers were on the new format, but he does believe that there’s one big change that the league needs to make moving forward.
The new format saw the 24 All-Stars get split into three different teams, with two of them facing off in the first round, and the other taking on the winning squad from the Rising Stars Challenge, which took place on Friday night. The winner of those two games would square off in the final game. The main problem in Tatum’s eyes was that the final game was interrupted by a ceremony commemorating the “Inside the NBA” crew, which the Celtics star was not a fan of.
“The format was cool,” Tatum said after he came out on top with Team Shaq. “I think the toughest part, they stopped the game to do the presentation while we were kind of halfway through it. We were sitting down for 20 minutes, whatever it was, it was kind of tough to get back into the game after that. But besides that I thought it was cool. First two games were pretty competitive. Think if we just find a way to not have that long intermission in between the games or during the games, I think it would be a lot better.”
Jayson Tatum shines once again in the All-Star Game
This was Tatum’s sixth straight All-Star Game appearance, and he continued his recent trend of shining amongst the game’s biggest stars. After having previously won the All-Star Game MVP award back in 2023, Tatum played a big role in helping Team Shaq come out on top, as he scored 21 points, hauled in five rebounds, and dished out four assists while hitting nine of his 11 shots from the field.
An argument could be made that Tatum deserved to win MVP for the night, but the honor ended up going to Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry. Whether or not the NBA heeds Tatum’s advice remains to be seen, but with a slew of negative criticism flying in, it looks like the NBA is going to have to make some more changes to this format for next year’s festivities.
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