This weekend, Chicago will be hosting the 2020 NBA All-Star weekend, that will end, as per usual, on Sunday night with the highly anticipated All-Star game featuring, like last year,Team LeBron vs. Team Giannis.
In the past few years, this game has received a lot of praise as well as complaints, especially for the lack of competitiveness and the absence of actual defensive plays, with games reaching ridiculous scores after 4 quarters (178-164 in 2019 for example).
This year, the league has decided to change things a bit to make the game more competitive, and here are those new rules:
Playing for charities
Each team will be supporting a Chicago based charity, and compete to make their respective charity earn some cash. LeBron chose to play for Chicago Scholars while Giannis and his team will defend After School Matters. But how exactly will the charities get money?
Each quarter will be played as an individual game, with the scoreboard resetting when the 12 minutes are played, and the winner of each quarter will see $100,000 delivered to their charity.
Should the quarter end on a tie, each charity will be granted $50,000.
Tribute to Kobe
The fourth and final quarter will see a tribute to Kobe Bryant. The scores from the first three quarters will be added to start the last one, and the quarter will end when a set score is reached, instead of against the clock. This final score will be calculated as follows: the highest cumulated score + 24 (Kobe's number).
For example, if after the first three quarters, the cumulated scores are Team Giannis 100 - 90 Team LeBron, then the target score will be 124 and whoever reaches it first wins the quarter.
The winner of the fourth quarter will see $200,000 awarded to their charity.
Should one team will all four quarters, their charity will receive the $500,000 and the other charity will still get $100,000, so both charities are sure to receive something.
Adam Silver (NBA Commissioner) also announced that the traditional All-Star MVP trophy, rewarding the best player of the All-Star game, will be named the Kobe Bryant MVP Award from now on.
So here are the new rules for the 2020 NBA All-Star game in a nutshell. The NBA hopes that they will increase competitiveness, as teams will want to win for a greater purpose than fame or fun: improving the lives of Chicago kids and communities. Hopefully, we'll see more intense defensive plays and we're sure to see a great game winning shot, as both teams will compete to reach a target score.
What are your thoughts on these new rules?
Don't miss the Team LeBron vs. Team Giannis game on Sunday, February 16th at 8 pm/et on TNT.
