EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsINGLEWOOD, Calif. -- The last time San Antonio Spurs big man Victor Wembanyama faced a team stacked with American All-Stars, France and USA played a gold medal game for the ages at the 2024 Paris Olympics.With the NBA introducing a new All-Star Game format this weekend, hoping to tap into that competitive spirit by breaking up the participants into two teams of Americans and players from around the world -- rather than the traditional East-West rosters -- Wembanyama vowed to do his part to make Sunday's game count."Exclamation-point plays, playing in a solid manner and sharing the ball with energy," Wembanyama said Saturday when asked how he planned to set a competitive tone. "If you share that energy, people feel like they have a responsibility to share it back to you."After the past few All-Star Games barely resembled an NBA basketball game - with the East's 211-186 win in 2024 in Indianapolis representing the exhibition's nadir, especially considering that result followed Hall of Famers Larry Bird and Julius "Dr. J" Irving addressing the players pregame and urging them to take the game more seriously - Wembanyama said this year will be different."I'm confident in the way it's going to go," Wembanyama said.Some American stars weren't so sure.When Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards, who played in that gold medal game in Paris, was asked if All-Star could duplicate that intensity in anyway, he replied flatly, "No."When asked to elaborate, the four-time All-Star, playing on the younger USA Stars team, said, "That was the Olympics. It's just that simple."Kevin Durant, a 16-time All-Star playing on the veteran USA Stripes team, said that the NBA All-Star Game has never been as competitive as it is glowingly remembered as now by sports fans."I just feel like fans and media need something to complain about, and the All-Star Game don't make them feel like they felt when they were kids," Durant said Saturday. "They need something to complain about. I don't think it's that big of a deal, to be honest, the All-Star Game, All-Star Weekend. [We are] just here to celebrate the game of basketball. People [are] still coming to celebrate the game of basketball. They're coming to watch."People at home are complaining about the game and the intensity of it. I don't think we'll ever get past that, but to see everybody still here, showing up, doing their jobs, pushing the game forward through this weekend, you go around the city, it's so much energy in the city, so many past greats."Durant said he's spent time on YouTube watching All-Star Games from the 1960s through the 1990s."I wanted to see what the big deal was and if it was really that much intensity, like Game 7 like y'all said it was back then ... And it wasn't," Durant said. "The intensity the older generation has been talking about, I don't know if I've seen it, you know?"Not that every player didn't find something to aspire to from past All-Star games.While Sunday will determine if the new format will improve the product, Detroit Pistons guard Cade Cunningham, making his second All-Star appearance, said that he wants to go back to the traditional conference battle after the league has tinkered with player captain drafts, a target score ending and now USA vs. the World."I would like to experience East vs. West," Cunningham said. "I want to experience what all the greats played in ... I'm sure it will come back eventually."
