Report: Players Want To Get Paid To Play In All-Star Game

The main reason players played hard in the NBA In-Season Tournament was because money was at stake. 

The Los Angeles Lakers won the In-Season Tournament, with each player getting $500,000.

“But here’s the uncomfortable truth: In this season in which the league’s inaugural In-Season Tournament paid players of the winning team $500,000 apiece, that may be the only way to fix this problem,” Amick wrote. “This, apparently, is the pay-for-play era. Even if the league already has players topping the $50 million mark in annual salary and a seven-figure minimum ($1.1 million). As one league source shared afterward, when the players had talked privately about why they’d chosen this tough-to-watch style of play, the IST set the kind of precedent that won’t be forgotten anytime soon.”

The 2024 All-Star Game was boring from start to finish. No defense was played. The East beat the West by a final score of 211-186. 

“For me, it’s an All-Star Game, so I don’t think I will ever look at it like being super competitive,” Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards said. “It’s always fun. I don’t know what they can do to make it more competitive. It’s always fun. But I don’t know what they can do to make it more competitive. It’s a break. I don’t think nobody wants to come here and compete.”

Added Lakers superstar LeBron James: “Obviously from a player’s perspective, it’s fun to get up and down, but at the end of the day, our competitive nature (doesn’t) like to have free-flowing scoring like that. But I think the good thing that came out of tonight was none of the players were injured and everybody came out unscathed or how they were before the game started. So it’s a deeper conversation.”