The 2026 All-Star Game saw yet another new format introduced, as three teams — two US teams and one World team — played a Round Robin format that culminated in a championship match between the two top teams. With each game being a 12-minute affair, it ended up being equivalent to a normal 48 minutes of basketball. Each team played two games, then Team Stars and Team Stripes duked it out for the championship.

Though Team Stars ended up pulling away for a blowout win in the final game, the first three games were extremely competitive, ending on game-winners, and showed off a real sense of competition and effort from the players, for the most part. It remains to be seen if the format will stay the same for the next editions of All-Star Weekend, but there's no doubt it was a resounding success this year.

Prior to the games being played, Steph Curry shared his thoughts on the All-Star Game formats and hypothesized about what he could consider changing moving forward, even though he wouldn't be playing in this year's game due to injury.

"Unfortunately, I can't help this year because I'm not playing. The only thing I would think about is shortening the game. That might be the only real suggestion I would have, because it's hard to replicate the intensity of a regular season game, and nobody's asking anybody to act like it's a playoff game with those type of stakes. I know they're doing a great job of trying to shorten the day for us as All-Stars because we're so used to a certain gameday prep, and the league is doing a great job trying to address that, knowing this media part, the fan experience, the made for TV part of the game is a big deal. 40-minute game, maybe, if you're going back to the two-team format. But in this situation, short and sweet is better. I think that would help."

With the hindsight of this year's game in hand, Curry may be onto something with the game length. Though each game essentially being a quarter wasn't an issue as a whole — team World basically played one half of a game, while the US teams played three quarters — the way the games were scheduled meant Team Stripes, which was colloquially known as the veteran team, ended up playing three games in a row, and their fatigue showed in the final game.

Shorter games mean they could have had more gas left in the tank at the end, or changing the schedule up in some way to prevent this situation somehow might be necessary if the NBA is to continue this format moving forward.

As mentioned earlier, though, the blowout nature of the final game doesn't take away from the fact that the first three games contained exciting finishes. 

In the first game of the afternoon, Team Stars needed overtime to defeat Team World. In a sudden death first-to-five, Scottie Barnes won it for Team Stars on a three-pointer while they were losing 5-2. The intensity of the players and how much they cared this year was evident, particularly on the face of Victor Wembanyama, who looked genuinely upset that Team World couldn't pull out the overtime win.

In the second game, Team Stripes put the younger Team Stars in their place, thanks to a game-winning three from De'Aaron Fox as time expired. Team Stripes was also down by 1 in this scenario, but the casual air that Fox had when he hit the shot showed just how elite these players were.

Finally, the match between Team Stripes and Team World looked like Wembanyama and Team World were out for blood, jumping out to a big lead before Kawhi Leonard single-handedly willed Team Stripes back into it in front of his home crowd. After sinking a dagger three-pointer to win the game with just seconds left, Leonard finished with an unbelievable 31 points in just 10 minutes of action.

Overall, the All-Star Game was actually a positive experience this year, contrary to how it's been for some of the recent editions. The NBA will look to keep this momentum heading into 2027's events in Phoenix.