2024 NBA All-Star Game Returning to East vs. West Format; No Draft or Target Score

The NBA is returning to a traditional format for this season's All-Star Game.

The league announced on Wednesday that the game would return to a matchup of the Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference, would eliminate the player draft and was doing away with the untimed fourth quarter Final Target Score.

Captains will still be named, however, based on the top vote-getters from each conference.

"The theme this year is, 'Back to basketball,'" NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told reporters.

Silver foreshadowed the changes during an appearance on ESPN's First Take last week.

"We're looking at some potential changes in format. ... Maybe a return to something more traditional in terms of how the teams are presented," he said at the time. "We went to sort of this captain and draft notion, but historically it was East vs. West."

While the All-Star Game is unlikely to elicit strong feelings one way or another, given that its an exhibition game largely treated like a defense-optional scrimmage by the players as they try to avoid injury, the announced changes weren't met with much enthusiasm:

The All-Star draft had also started to feel like a recruiting tool for top superstars, and it's hard to ignore that Giannis Antetokounmpo used his first reserve pick in last year's game to select Damian Lillard and not his then-teammate, Jrue Holiday. Talk about foreshadowing.

And who could forget LeBron James' draft strategy back in 2019?

Davis and James would eventually become teammates on the Lakers.

Granted, the NBA's decision to eliminate the draft—which proved to be fairly entertaining television in its short stay, given moments like the one above—may have little to do with potential tampering concerns. If players want to recruit on the sly, they don't need an All-Star Game draft to do so.

But it's nonetheless an interesting subplot to the league's decision to go back to a traditional East vs. West format.