Adam Silver admits that maligned NBA All-Star format was 'a miss': 'We're a bit back to the drawing board'

The NBA has for years tweaked and tinkered with its All-Star format in an effort to revive the once-celebrated weekend that's devolved into the subject of ridicule.

February's iteration may have been its worst effort yet. A four-team tournament that featured one team comprised of non All-Stars and a championship game featuring lengthy breaks in action and an unwelcome deluge of comedian Kevin Hart was met with widespread criticism.

Add in the competing NHL Four Nation's Face-Off that that was a resounding success by comparison, and it's fair to say that the NBA's All-Star weekend was a failure.

Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged on Thursday that things could have gone better. Silver addressed the All-Star format during a news conference of the league's Board of Governors meeting in New York.

"Sitting there, I thought this was a little better," Silver told reporters. "But, it was a miss.

"We're not there in terms of creating an All-Star experience that we can be proud of and that our players can be proud of."

Silver went on to acknowledge the success of the NHL's Four Nation's Face-Off that pitted four teams of NHL players from the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland against each other in a round-robin tournament. It featured intense competition and arenas filled with enthusiastic fans.

By comparison, the NBA All-Star tournament featured little to no competition among a group of players with little to play for. It was a familiar site for an All-Star event that struggled to produce competitive games with any semblance of defense for years.

Some floated a similar format to the NHL's pitting U.S. players against international players as an alternative. Silver said that he's "not sure that makes sense" while citing the level of basketball development internationally.

He then got to the heart of the matter: competition.

"I think at the height of this, we sell competition," Silver said. "And I think that our players recognize they're not putting their best foot forward — when there's a sense that they're not all-in on playing an All-Star game."

Silver then acknowledged the format issues that plagued this year's All-Star weekend on top of the absence of a competitive game.

"We're both a sport and an entertainment brand," Silver continued. "We re-calibrated for this year's All-Star game in San Francisco around more of an entertainment product and don't think it worked.

"The breaks were too long. And I get it. It was an opportunity to celebrate TNT as they were gonna have their last All-Star game. It was well-intentioned. But I think the long stoppage of play, for example, in that final game didn't work for anyone. We're a bit back to the drawing board."