For Charles Barkley, NBA All-Star Weekend will always conjure warm memories of his 2007 footrace with veteran referee Dick Bavetta.
Kenny Smith will always recall Vince Carter’s electrifying performance in the 2000 slam dunk contest—a moment that Smith called on TV and, he says, “made me a fabric” of the event.
Shaquille O’Neal thinks about how much he relished the competition as a player—and his disappointment at what the All-Star Game has become during his years as an analyst.
On the eve of their 14th and—yes, wow, still hard to believe—final weekend as the official analysts/emcees/clown princes of All-Star festivities, the stars of TNT’s Inside the NBA milled about a large trailer at San Francisco’s Pier 48 and considered this strange and abrupt finale to their legendary run.
There was a little nostalgia, a little appreciation, a little grumbling, a little needling, and a lot of laughs, much like any episode of the award-winning Inside the NBA, which is nearing a strange sort of inflection point.
This is the show’s final season on TNT, because parent company Warner Bros. Discovery failed to come to terms with the NBA on a new contract. However, Inside the NBA will continue next season and beyond—live from Studio J in Atlanta, as ever—and still produced by Turner, but the show will be carried by ABC/ESPN, under a unique contractual arrangement. The Inside guys will work 45 to 52 nights a year, down from about 58. Other than the change in network, the show should look, feel, and sound relatively the same.
But All-Star Weekend is moving to NBC under the league’s new media-rights deal. Which means this weekend is the last one for Chuck, Kenny, Shaq, and Ernie Johnson as the voices of the NBA’s midseason showcase.
Smith said that reality didn’t really hit him until early Thursday afternoon, when a friend asked if he planned to attend next year’s All-Star Weekend, in Los Angeles. “I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’” And then he remembered. “I’m like, ‘Oh my god.’ It’s different, coming to the game as a fan, [versus] the access, coming through the tunnel, being where the players are coming out, talking to them, laughing.”
By now, Smith said, the TNT crew feels as intrinsic to the weekend as the 3-point shootout, the dunk contest, and the (much-maligned) All-Star Game itself. Indeed, Smith said, they’re the ones who helped create the Sunday event’s new format. This year, instead of the conventional 48-minute game, the league is staging a four-team mini-tournament. The 24 All-Stars have been dispersed among three teams, as chosen by Smith, Barkley, and O’Neal. The fourth team will be the winner of Friday’s Rising Stars Game.
There will be two semifinal clashes, followed by a final, all of them played to a target score, instead of using a game clock. League officials hope the new format will inspire a better effort from the players, after years of lackluster games and relentless criticism from fans and pundits.
“The league had a meeting with us to help—like, how can we help get this better?” Smith said. “And we came up with this concoction of doing a tournament, we’re going to pick teams.”
Barkley decided to assemble all the international players on his squad. Smith drafted all the younger stars. O’Neal took all the veterans.
“All of that came about because they feel we’re [part of] the fabric of the league,” Smith said, “and then all of a sudden you’re not going to be part of that, possibly.”
As with pretty much any other NBA topic, there was a sharp division of views in the TNT trailer. Barkley seemed skeptical about the new All-Star approach, but open to it—“We're gonna get to see, brother.” O’Neal could hardly mask his contempt—for the new format itself, and for the players whose indifference caused the NBA to change the game.
“I just don’t understand why players don’t have any pride anymore,” O’Neal said. “It’s sad when you gotta change the format. That’s not what All-Star Weekend is all about. I remember in high school, in college, ‘Oh shit, Magic’s coming back?’” he said, referring to Magic Johnson’s return in 1992, following his retirement after contracting HIV. “That game, they played hard. And Magic hit the last shot. … You had the best, really competing and trying to win.”
O’Neal said the All-Star Game was once a platform to “heighten your status” among the elite. “Like I always wanted to come here just to continue the status of Shaq as the baddest big man in the game.”
But nothing about 2025 All-Star Weekend feels quite the same as it did when Barkley, O’Neal, and Smith were in their prime, in the 1990s. The dunk contest, once the domain of basketball gods like Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, Kobe Bryant, and Carter, no longer draws the superstars. This year’s event features two-time champion Mac McClung, who mostly plays in the G League, plus two rookies (Matas Buzelis and Stephon Castle) and a second-year player (Andre Jackson Jr.).
“Obviously, we would like to have household names in it,” Barkley said. “Those guys [the stars] are all worried about getting embarrassed. Ain’t like the old days, where the stars got in it. These guys are worried about losing to somebody for their ego purposes.”
All of the TNT guys agree that All-Star Weekend could use a little more effort, a little more star power, and maybe a little more creative juice. None of them are quite sure how to fix it all, although O’Neal suggested simply upping the stakes. “Put one of those [Rolls Royce] Phantoms in the middle of the floor for the dunk contest. Second place would be a Maybach. Third place, we have a million dollars.”
Would any of that work? Who knows? But finding new ways to inject life into All-Star Weekend is not O’Neal’s or Barkley’s or Smith’s problem anymore. Smith, who holds an annual charity fundraiser at All-Star Weekend, figures he’ll still be involved in some way. He seems genuinely attached to the whole affair.
But his broadcast sparring partners had other thoughts. “I’m going to be enjoying myself somewhere on an island next year,” Barkley said. “Somewhere where there’s blue water,” O’Neal said. Barbados, maybe.
After 14 All-Star Weekends of quips and barbs and snappy analysis, you can’t say they haven’t earned it.
