in Lists, NBA

17 Biggest Winners and Losers of 2025 NBA All-Star Weekend

From Mac McClung jumping over a car to Draymond Green still looking for the guy who did this, let’s talk about 2025 NBA All-Star Weekend

2025 nba all-star weekend
Feb 16, 2025; San Francisco, CA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers mascot Franklin the Dog and Kevin Hart after the 2025 NBA All Star Game at Chase Center. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images

The 2025 NBA All-Star Weekend started up Friday night with me having no interest in the Celebrity Game. Shout out to Rickea Jackson serving looks. I think Druski was there but I’ve seen nonstop AI photos of him in so many different jerseys to mock guys after they have bad nights that I have no way to discern whether or not any photograph I see of a comedian playing basketball is real or not.

So I tuned in at the Rising Stars 4-team tournament against the G-League All-Stars to get a sneak peek of what Sunday’s All-Star tournament would look like.

A 4-team mini tournament where the first games are a race to score 40 and the final game’s a race to 25 with the winner earning a spot in Sunday’s All-Star tournament—meaning there was a possibility that a bunch of minor league basketball players could have potentially been in an NBA All-Star game against Kevin Durant and Steph Curry, finally answering the question we’ve always asked ourselves: could Nikola Jokic stop Dink Pate??

Winners: Run TMC

The 4 teams were coached by Chris Mullin, Mitch Richmond and Tim Hardaway, AKA Run TMC—the most electrifying team in the late 80s/early 90s, specializing in bucket-getting.


You cannot celebrate the NBA in Golden State without acknowledging the GOATs.

Winner: Jeremy Lin

Jeremy Lin was there, too, coaching the G-Leaugers.

Lin was an undrafted rookie in 2010 for the Warriors.

Averaged 2.6 points.

Lin just had to be part of this big weekend. You can’t tell the story of the Golden State Warriors without mentioning the time Lin scored 13 points against the Lakers.

Los Angeles won 117-89 but the Warriors would’ve lost by at least 13 more points if Jeremy Lin weren’t there.

Glad to see Jeremy out of the house. Sure it wasn’t difficult to get him to participate as I imagine a producer recognize him when he dropped off their Uber Eats order.

The G-League team tried the hardest.

Good for them.

Loser: Reed Sheppard

Couldn’t help but notice the no. 3 pick in the 2024 draft, Reed Sheppard, made the G-League All-Star and looked like a fan who won a contest at the local Planet Fitness—or wherever they play their G-League games—and won a chance to play with the Rising Stars.

Reed looked passive and zapped of confidence—which is insane because he’s averaging 30 points down there.

If I had to guess, the no. 3 pick probably felt silly playing for the G-League team.

I, too, would feel like a dork running a backcourt with Mac McClung while Bub Carrington and Bilal Coulibaly—two Washington Wizards roleplayers with no real juice—get to at least be represented as actual NBA players.

Keep your head up, Reed. You will love Phoenix next season once the Rockets get bounced in the first round and make a terrible trade for an 80-year-old Kevin Durant this summer.

Chris Mullins’s team of Zach Edey, Ryan Dunn, Keyonte George, Stephon Castle, Jaylen Wells, Trace Jackson-Davis and Dalton Knect won the tournament to face real NBA All-Stars on Sunday.

What could go wrong?

Loser: Skills Challenge

Next up, we have the Saturday night Skills Challenge where two teammates go back and forth, uh, doing bounce passes.

It’s some real “last day of basketball summer camp” vibes.

I think it looked terrible because Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 women’s basketball league, just did what the NBA should’ve been doing for years.

Winner: Unrivaled

Unrivaled had a sick 1-on-1 tournament this week with the best women in the world rolling the balls out onto the court and getting to work.

If you’re afraid of getting embarrassed then D up.

Unrivaled’s 1-on-1 tourney is astronomically more captivating than watching Evan Mobley bounce a ball into a bucket. Perhaps the solution to the NBA’s All-Star problem is how little it has to do with actual basketball.

Losers: Wemby and Chris Paul

But Wemby and Chris Paul made things interesting by electing to just flat-out cheat.

Each player has a rack of 3 balls they have to shoot before they advance to the next part of dribbling around cones or playing hopscotch or whatever corny little kids drills happen in the Skills Challenge.

Wemby and Chris Paul realized that you only get 3 shots, whether you make any or not, so why waste time even shooting them?

This just about sums up Chris Paul’s entire career.

He has always been more focused on telling the refs when an opponent subs into a game without tucking his shirt in instead of like, trying to score more points than them.

He’s the guy who will chuck the ball full court at the end of a one-possession playoff game as the opposing team attempts to intentionally foul him, hoping the refs reward him with a shooting foul—but instead, the refs call nothing and he threw the ball out of bounds for no reason.

I pray Chris Paul hasn’t passed his tiny little Homer Simpson glasses he uses to read the fine print in all the rule books down to Victor Wembamyama.

Wemby has the potential to be the greatest of all time and may never win a championship because his vet was a perennial loser, constantly searching for loopholes and legalities to win.

I spent the Skills challenge playing games on my phone but congrats to the winner. Not even worth me Googling it.

Loser: Jalen Brunson

Next, we had the 3-point contest. Shout out to my guy Jalen Brunson competing, briefly, before quietly being eliminated and never seen again for the remainder of the night. Not the last time that would happen to him this weekend. Brunson needn’t have shown up at all.

Winner: Tyler Herro

Buddy Hield went off in the first round in front of his home fans—shooting on rims he sees at least 41 times a year.

But man, the 3-point contest is wack when most guys miss their shots.

A ton of scores in the teens as guys could not get the ball in the rim.

I don’t believe this is indicative of some larger NBA problem. I usually like the 3-point contest.

Some years, you get dramatic shoot outs and unfortunately, this year you get Tyler Herro—a man who looks like he listens to the local Columbine police dispatch recordings from the day of that school shooting to get him motivated.

Tyler Herro looks like he’s juuuust about done writing his manifesto and he’s waiting on a few more supplies to arrive in the mail before he plants his bomb at the Capitol.

Congrats to big Herro for the win thooooo.

Please don’t make me bite the curb, Derek Vinyard.

And it’s time for the maaaaaain event. The Slam Dunk Contest (sponsored by AT&T.)

Losers: Matas Buzelis and Andre Jackson Jr

Matas Buzelis was my favorite participant of the night—trying a bunch of dunks that would’ve shook the Bay if Matas Buzelis was athletic enough to complete any of them.

Buzelis and Andre Jackson Jr went out there wasting everyone’s time but I won’t be too harsh on them.

I know if I walked onto the NBA All-Star court and tried to dunk, I’d wake up in the back of an ambulance with no memory of how I even got there.

Mac McClung would get another perfect score, leaping over my head blood, although I imagine the NBA would use my brain injury as a chance to run 10 more minutes of commercials.

Winner: Mac McClung

I love the way Mac McClung dunks.


After years of guys taking 2,3,4 or more dunk attempts—leaving us feeling underwhelmed and exhausted when they finally figure out how to get the ball in the net—Mac is hyper-focused on elevating and finishing his dunks while having no concern for how he lands.

My man leaped over a car and faceplanted on the hardwood.

Mac doesn’t show up for a participation trophy.

Like, I have no idea what Andre Jackson Jr was there to do because he certainly wasn’t interested in winning.

But that’s All-Star Weekend in general.

No one seems super invested in leaving with a victory.

Larry Bird would’ve hung himself in the locker room if he lost a 3-point contest. These guys can’t even hit multiple 3’s in a row because they’re not trying.

We can joke about Mac being a G-Leaguer all day but when he puts on his little magic headband, he’s there to revolutionize the dunk contest rather than simply be there.

Things are about to fall off a cliff now.

The 2025 NBA All-Star Weekend reached all-time lows on Sunday.

I was an idiot who tuned into the broadcast at 6pm believing the game started at 6pm, only to be waterboarded with 2 straight hours of TNT praising themselves and Draymond Green shitting on the league, the players and the entire All-Star Weekend.

Loser: Draymond Green

Draymond Green is objectively the loudest, most unnecessary voice in sports media.

His entire schtick is talking from the perspective of an “alpha”—using his championship rings as a shield to disrespect anyone not named Steph Curry or LeBron James.

He wants to be like Charles Barkley but lacks all of the charm, self-awareness, wit and genuine authenticity.

He is a social media-brained troll, only capable of insulting those he deems ‘less than’ because they didn’t pass his arbitrary masculinity test.

Draymond wants to mock everyone but cannot handle any pushback or jokes at his expense.

He’s a crybaby on and off the court whose biggest contribution to the game is setting illegal, moving screens to get Steph Curry open.

He’s not some all-time great defender.

He’s just bullied the referees into allowing him to foul by screaming in their faces whenever he is penalized before excusing his immature, toddler nonsense as the emotion and passion he needs to play at a high level.

I was excited about the new format because last year’s All-Star game was a half-court shooting playground game with no effort from anyone—but Draymond refused to allow any excitement by constantly stepping on any positivity to complain about the Rising Stars being included in the games.

And then my conspiracy brain went off after the broadcast announced LeBron James would be sitting out with an ankle injury to which Draymond immediately responded “I could’ve told you he wasn’t playing an hour ago” in his typical condescending, know-it-all, raspy “I was up all night long screaming at my spouse” voice.

Loser: LeBron James

LeBron played 34 minutes against the Utah Jazz 4 days earlier.

Not a single limp in his step that night.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence LeBron chose to sit out before playing the Rising Stars team while Draymond relentlessly mocked them.

These men completely devalued the All-Star game for years—turning it into a game of H.O.R.S.E.—then threw a temper tantrum when the NBA punished their actions by changing the format of the games.

Two main characters obsessed with stitching themselves into Kobe’s legacy while simultaneously not giving a shit about the All-Star game that Kobe took seriously.

While I’m shitting on Draymond—this mouthbreathing, No Kid Left Behind product, whose entire personality is built around being a contrarian under the guise of “telling the truth”—also said that he hates watching NBA games because they’re “boring”.

Nah, he’s really telling it like it is.

I hate the NBA, man.

It’s all about who’s more athletic and who can make more shots.

Ugh, I hate that this is a new thing that’s ruining the sport.

It’s why I quit the NFL.

It’s boring.

It’s all about who can run faster and score the most touchdowns.

Completely unwatchable game.

No one wants to see fastbreaks and tremendous shot-making.

We want slow, Patrick Ewing-knee’d guys shooting contested, turn-around midrange jumpers because it is so much more fun to watch players shoot from 18 feet than 25 feet.

Losers: TNT

This would be the theme of TNT’s NBA broadcast for the remainder of the night as one by one, Draymond Green, Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley would shit on the product.

Hell, TNT even brought Kevin Hart in to join the hating.

Kevin Hart yelled over the game—into the arena loudspeakers for the players to hear—about how big men need to stop shooting 3’s and get into the paint—a suggestion you would make if you haven’t watched a basketball game in a decade and don’t realize that Nikola Jokic, Karl-Anthony Towns and Damontis Sabonis are all in the Top 10 of 3-point percentage this season.

So many people who hate basketball were given microphones during an event that should be celebrating basketball. That’s absurd.

Kenny Smith, Candace Parker and Reggie Miller did their best to steer the ship in the right direction but even their best efforts could not thwart what became blatantly clear by the end of the night.

Winner: Capitalism

The reason the NBA All-Star game sucks now is capitalism.

I know at least one person rolled their eyes reading that but walk with me for a second.

It won’t take long.

This article is already way longer than I wanted it to be but I got into a Draymond Green hate zone.

Mr. Beast came out after one of the games to do a half-court shooting contest with Damian Lillard and a fan.

If Dame made 3 half-court shots, Mr. Beast would donate $100,000 to his charity but if the fan made just one shot, he’d get $100K.

And at the buzzer—with the broadcast ready to load up another Rocket Mortgage commercial—the fan hit the shot and was awarded $100K, in a tub of single dollar bills.

Right before the commercial break, you can see Dame and some of the mascots put the spilled-out dollars back into that weird little Mr. Beast vat of money which makes me believe that Mr. Beast didn’t cut a check after. That kid literally had to like, stuff 100,000 singular dollar bills into several Golden State Warriors swag bags in the corridor after.

I don’t mind having a super popular Youtuber do a money giveaway and I’m not just saying that out of fear, knowing Mr. Beast will one day become the Emperor of North America—sending all nay-sayers to work in the meme mines.

But as the broadcast went on, the show seemed to have less and less to do with actual basketball and more to do with ad revenue.

Jalen Brunson busted his ass and earned an NBA All-Star start.

He played 8 minutes.

No one on his team played more than 8 minutes.

The halftime show—which was incredible by the way—was longer than the game.

Winner: Halftime Show

E-40, Too Short, Saweetie and En Vogue legitimately all had incredible performances and I have nothing bad to say about any of them.

 

RIP Mac Dre.

In the final game between the “OGs” and the International stars, the OGs took an early 11-1 lead so the international team took a timeout.

The broadcast came back from that timeout to honor the TNT crew with a long ceremony, as well as awarding Kevin Hart and miniature trophy because he’s small. You get it?

Losers: The NBA

In the MIDDLE OF THE GAME, the NBA paused to throw a fucking funeral for the same TNT team that spent the day shitting on the NBA.

Brutally long glazing of the TNT crew, like, prime Ava Devine level glazing, for a team who still finishes the season by the way. It’s not as if this was their final nights working there. TNT has a national NBA broadcast this Thursday.

The NBA used the All-Star format change to stuff in as many advertisements and corporate sponsors as possible.

There were about 30 minutes of actual basketball on Sunday night. The event started at 8 and ended at 11. 30 minutes were spent playing basketball.

We can complain all day long about the All-Star game not being as good as it was when we were kids but of course it’s not the same.

The NBA, like every other major American corporation, is entirely profit-driven.

Nothing is for the culture.

Nothing is for the kids.

Nothing is for families.

Nothing is about art or competition.

Adam Silver has made his mission clear: make the NBA as many dollars as possible.

Of course the players don’t try hard.

They spend all weekend at sponsored events—getting random direct deposits from Bose headphones and Nike and Gatorade or whatever—to appear in conference rooms and outdoor tents and parties that are less about having fun and more about exchanging business cards.

By the time they get to Sunday night, they have expended all their energy collecting bags from companies—except Anthony Edwards who for sure spent the weekend giggling and saying “ha ha you so crazy” as he watches the woman he’s about to sleep with poke holes in his condoms.

The players don’t try hard because they make exorbitant wealth and tearing an ACL in the All-Star game trying to block a shot could rob them of their potential earnings.

Losers: Us

The All-Star game used to be fun for the players and now it’s work. But also, we’re all older now.

The All-Star game used to be fun for us but now we have work in the morning.

My jaw hit the floor watching Jason Richardson in the dunk contest when I was younger and if he did the same exact performance today, I would be kind of excited maybe but yea, I’m not 10 years old anymore.

That’s what happens.

I’m ready for NBC and Amazon to take over and breathe new life into the game I love.

No other sport hires people to promote their game by consistently degrading and mocking it.

I cannot wait for an NBA broadcast that doesn’t attempt to rile up fans with “Remember when they used to play real ball??” and actually provides fun and thorough analysis of the on-court product because we are witnessing the most talented league ever. Top to bottom the NBA is full of great players and I’m ready to stop pretending as if the NBA is in some sort of crisis.

Fuck TNT.

 

 

 

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Written by thelesterlee

Creator of Deadseriousness. Diehard Knicks, Yankees and Giants fan who wants to create a sports and pop culture space that isn't the same copy and pasted AI content you see everywhere else.

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