NBA Rumors: Shaquille O'Neal, Charles Barkley to Spice Up Rookie-Sophomore Game

The NBA is constantly tweaking the format to their famous All-Star Weekend and just might have come up with a great way to popularize the Rookie-Sophomore game this year.

Instead of pitting the top rookies against the best sophomores, as has been the format for the “Rookie Challenge” since 2000, the league may decide to have Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal draft and coach teams comprised of all the eligible players.

Alex Kennedy over at HoopsWorld broke the news earlier, and quite frankly, it sounds like a fantastic idea.

He wrote,

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We’re hearing that two TNT personalities – possibly Charles Barkely and Shaquille O’Neal – will assemble the teams from the pool of selected players and coach the squads, as well. That means we could see Kyrie Irving throwing alley oops to Blake Griffin or John Wall running a fastbreak with MarShon Brooks.

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It would be hard to picture anyone else besides those two as the coaches of these two teams, as they are both former players and the two funniest and most popular analysts on the network.

This would be a phenomenal change to a game that has gotten stale over the past few years and add a new wrinkle to the All-Star Weekend in Orlando this season.

It would, presumably, make the teams more fair and balanced at each position and keep it more competitive than it has been in recent seasons.

And then, of course, we get to see Sir Charles and Shaq goofing around and having fun while a great game is going on in front of us.

These changes are a neat way for the league to showcase their lighter side while still bringing a balanced game of basketball to one of the slower nights of the All-Star Weekend.

Hopefully, these fixes are in the works and the NBA officially announces them sometime in the next few weeks.