to hold off France<\/a> in the final minutes of the gold-medal game. And in the NBA, international players have won every MVP award since 2018, with James Harden the last American-born player to capture the league\u2019s most coveted individual prize.<\/p>\n\u201cThe conversation that the international players caught up to us, the American players hear that,\u201d McGrady said prior to Sunday\u2019s tip-off. \u201cIt\u2019s not the platform. It\u2019s not the format. It\u2019s the players that change that. So I think mixing it up like this, the world\u2019s going to set the tone, and we\u2019re going to see competitive basketball.\u201d \u200b<\/p>\n
Kevin Durant struck a more conciliatory tone on Saturday. He said that some All-Star games were just as lethargic decades ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just feel like fans and the media need something to complain about,\u201d said Durant, who was making his 16th All-Star appearance. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s that big of a deal, to be honest. \u2026 The last couple of weeks, I\u2019ve watched the intro and at least the first quarter of every All-Star Game from, like, the 70s up until the late 90s. I wanted to see what the big deal was and if it was really that much intensity, like an [NBA finals] Game 7. The intensity the older generation has been talking about, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve seen it.\u201d<\/p>\n
During last year\u2019s game, Victor Wembanyama appeared upset after his teammate Alperen Sengun allowed Jayson Tatum to throw down an uncontested game-winning dunk. Before this year\u2019s game, the Frenchman said that the USA v World format should encourage the All-Stars to play for pride.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen that many of the best players have been increasingly foreign players,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cThere is some pride on that side. I guess there is pride on the American side, which is normal. So I think anything that gets you closer to representing your country brings up pride.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Wembanyama set the tone early by scoring the first seven points for Team World and finishing with a combined stat line of 33 points, eight rebounds, and three blocks in two games.\u200b His show of effort inspired other players to pick up the intensity, most notably, the 2026 All-Star Game MVP, Anthony Edwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWemby set the tone, and it woke me up for sure,\u201d Edwards said after Sunday\u2019s games. \u201cIt was definitely competitive with all three teams. I feel like the old heads [Team Stripes] played hard too. They were playing really good defense.\u201d<\/p>\n
From tip-off of the first game, this year\u2019s All-Star Game (or, technically, games) had a different energy. Players from Team Stars and Team World contested shots on defense, and embraced motion offense instead of a reliance on one-on-one scoring. In the final, the youthful Team Stars dismantled Team Stripes by a score of 47-21, led by Edwards, who finished with 32 points in three games.<\/p>\n
Despite the rout, the players competed with purpose, and the league may have finally fixed a longstanding problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was definitely a step up in the competitive department compared to last season,\u201d Durant said after the final game. \u201cHopefully, we just build upon this, and the weekend becomes more and more competitive. And the fans start to enjoy it more and more.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Basketball Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady flashed a look of disdain when recalling last year\u2019s NBA All-Star Game.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-472459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}