Biggest Winners and Losers from 2025 NBA All-Star Weekend
SAN FRANCISCO — For the first time in 25 years, NBA All-Star Weekend returned to the Bay Area, as San Francisco played host to the annual event.
Chase Center, the home of the Golden State Warriors, hosted the weekend's festivities, and a ton of programming around it in San Francisco and Oakland made for a packed three days of basketball.
Highlights included: Mac McClung making Slam Dunk contest history, winning his third straight Slam Dunk Contest; Tyler Herro taking home the Three-Point Contest crown; and Shaq's OG squad winning the All-Star Game, with hometown hero Stephen Curry claiming the MVP Award.
There was a series of highs, but there were also some lows.
Bleacher Report was on the ground, keeping tabs on the weekend's biggest winners and losers throughout 2025 NBA All-Star Weekend.
Winner: New Format
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After years of complaints that the NBA All-Star game featured zero defense and was just a meaningless exhibition game, 2025's new format did an excellent job of bringing out the competitive spirit in the players.
Through each of the two semifinal matchups and the championship game between Shaq's OGs and Chuck's Global Stars teams, the will to win was palpable.
The second semifinal, especially, was a tight battle between the Candace Parker-coached Rising Stars champs (who won Friday's Rising Stars competition and a spot in Sunday's All-Star Game) and Shaq's OG squad.
And even though seeing guys such as Dalton Knecht and Keyonte George in an All-Star Game was a little weird, it felt like the kids could pull off an impossible win for a minute before they ultimately fell short.
Kevin Hart and Ernie Johnson did their best Abbott and Costello impression as in-game MCs.
And if anything was missing, it was the flurry of eye-popping alley-oops and breakaway dunks of past games.
It’s a classic pick-your-poison proposition for fans who yearned for a game that mattered above all else.
What we got were well-contested games, above all else.
Losers: Chris Paul, Victor Wembanyama's Antics
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At Friday night's NBA Skills Challenge, Chris Paul and Victor Wembanyama thought they could game the system.
The competition is based on time, so the pair decided to not even try to make baskets at the shooting stations, instead tossing the balls to the side running through the course.
The Spurs squad finished the course with a considerable margin of victory, but instead of a short time penalty, they were notified that their antics were grounds for disqualification.
“This has Chris Paul’s fingerprints all over it," commentator Kevin Harlan joked on the air. And it did indeed reek of the 12-time All-Star's win-at-all-costs competitive nature.
The pair garnered a ton of boos from the crowd. If anything, though, it might prompt the league to change the format a bit to perhaps require made baskets.
Until then, Wemby might have just learned a lesson about getting caught in the tailspin of the Chris Paul experience.
Winner: Stephon Castle
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The Spurs rookie raised his profile considerably over the weekend.
Stephon Castle's second-place finish in the AT&T Slam Dunk Contest was overshadowed by Mac McClung's bonkers performance. But the 20-year-old more than held his own.
In the Rising Stars competition, Castle took over late in the Championship game helping Team C to victory and securing the MVP Award. He was among the leaders for Candace's Young Stars squad with six points in the All-Star Game and nearly made another monster moment when he missed an electrifying in-game dunk attempt.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Castle was rumored to be a part of a package to bring De'Aaron Fox to San Antonio. He wasn't, though, and after his showing at the All-Star game, he now looks like a legit third piece of a three-headed monster for years to come with Fox and Victor Wembanyama.
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Loser: Injuries
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We already knew Giannis Antetokounmpo's calf injury would keep him from playing this weekend, but it really hit home when staring up at his gigantic image in Thrive City alongside Curry's flanking the entrance to the Chase Center. His presence was missed.
Then, mere hours before the All-Star Game tipped off, LeBron James announced that he, too, would not be playing as he nursed ankle and foot injuries. It ended a streak of 20 consecutive ASG appearances for King James and sapped the game of its biggest star.
"I think [LeBron James] could've helped somebody else out and said this earlier…" Draymond Green said following the last-minute announcement. Ouch.
The disappointment didn't end there. Anthony Davis didn't even make it to San Francisco, and Anthony Edwards was a DNP all night with what was reportedly either a groin injury or a cold.
Winner: WNBA's Presence
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Before the weekend, the biggest WNBA-related storyline was how Caitlin Clark wouldn't be taking Sabrina Ionescu's place in another "Battle of the Sexes" shootout against Steph Curry.
Regardless, stars such as A'ja Wilson, Kelsey Plum, Kayla Thornton, Ionescu, Rickea Jackson and Nneka Ogwumike were everywhere in San Francisco over the weekend.
With the Golden State Valkyries tipping off their inaugural season at Chase Center in April, the city was primed for current and new WNBA fans.
Jackson and Thornton played in the All-Star Celebrity Game. Wilson and Plum were the faces of a campaign at the Google Pixel house with SLAM which brought droves of fans out all weekend. And it was clear all of the WNBA ballers knew what a killer opportunity this weekend was for them to be visible and promote the women's game
"I think it’s exactly the movement that we’ve been wanting and waiting on to show that we have mutual respect for one another," Wilson told Bleacher Report.
"Now another part of me would love the guys to come out this summer to our All-Star weekend. We’re going to see a lot of combinations where both the leagues are coming together, because it's a great way to bridge our fanbases together and to continue to grow our game."
Amen.
Loser: Mid-Game Intermission
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When the championship game got going, Shaq's OG Squad jumped out to an 11-1 lead. A timeout was called, and fans were staring at the lopsided score for an easy 20 minutes or more.
In a weekend that featured a number of lengthy mid-game intermissions in both the Castrol Rising Stars game and the main event, this was by far the most egregious.
During the break, TNT paid homage at center court to the departing NBA on TNT crew of Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal, Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson. It was well-deserved recognition for them, but it would have worked better between games rather than in the middle of one.
In the end, this pacing of the new format cannibalized the momentum of the championship game that kept sagging, until Kyrie Irving seemingly took it upon himself to wake everybody back up with a number of slick back-to-back plays.
Winner: Bay Area Hip-Hop Culture
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The Bay Area's hip-hop scene is massively influential, even though it doesn't always get its flowers.
The 2025 NBA All-Star Weekend felt a lot less like the usual cash grab around music at the All-Star Game and much more like a family of artists coming together to celebrate the moment when they finally did.
E-40 was everywhere. Saweetie too. Too $hort's "Blow The Whistle" felt like the official anthem of the weekend.
LaRussell also emerged as a legit rapper on the rise. Larry June made multiple appearances throughout the city alongside 2 Chainz and The Alchemist. And credit to the NBA's in-game programming of musical guests as well.
None were more exciting than Raphael Saadiq's masterful revue of Bay Area music that soundtracked the introductions to all of the All-Stars on Sunday night. He led his band on versions of Bay Area classics from Tower of Power, Journey, MC Hammer, Souls of Mischief, 2Pac, Metallica and Tony! Toni! Toné!
It showed the cross-generational power of hip-hop, the cultural force of the Bay Area and how it's all forever intertwined within the NBA.
Loser: Rising Stars Game
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Not to take anything away from Stephon Castle, but the start-to-finish competitiveness of the All-Star Game didn't exactly carry over to the Rising Stars Game.
There were missed dunks and easy buckets galore, and lengthy timeouts drained the energy from contests.
Zach Edey took a long three-point shot and missed. Ausar Thomspon went 1-of-5 from the free-throw line in a game, extending a painful finish that included four missed game-winning attempts including an air ball.
A battle between Keyonte George and Gradey Dick was about as exciting as it sounds, and it all never ceased to feel like an exhibition.
"People were kinda cruising the first couple minutes and not trying to hurt anybody," Castle told Bleacher Report. "Toward the end is when our competitive nature kicked in and we wanted to do whatever we could to win.”
This is exactly what it felt like and what the NBA was trying to get away from in the main All-Star Game's new format.
That being said, Rising Stars is a welcome showcase of young talent in the NBA, one whose ultimate strength is in the additional access to players that fans have seen throughout the weekend.
Winner: Stephen Curry
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When San Francisco was revving its engine up on Thursday for the full slate of the weekend's NBA All-Star Game programming, there was already a feeling in the air that this was Steph Curry's show.
The Golden State Warriors superstar was the ultimate ambassador for the game both on and off the court.
With eight points and six boards in Game 1 and another 12 points in the Championship Game, including an iconic half court three-pointer, Curry stood out above everyone else.
Outside of the Chase Center in the adjoining Thrive City entertainment complex, he transformed the brand-new Splash Sports Bar into his own "Club 30" for the weekend.
The club hosted parties for Curry's new Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, the Court of Gold Netflix series on the 2024 Paris Olympics gold medal-winning Team USA and more. Nobody activated their own personal brand better this weekend than Steph, and even Ayesha Curry threw functions in the city around her Sweet July Skin and Coffee.
"It's only fitting that the NBA All-Star Game MVP on this floor goes to Steph Curry," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said, while presenting the NBA All-Star Kobe Bryant MVP Trophy to the Warriors star.
Even Curry's entrance into the All-Star Game had the best crowd energy of the night, and the star made it clear all weekend that he rules over this city.
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