By JABARI WILBON

The National Basketball Association had its annual All Star weekend and All Star game this past weekend. Instead of having a traditional East vs. West match up, the commissioner decided to change the format of the game. The two players who received the most fan votes, Steph Curry and LeBron James, drafted their teams from the pool of NBA All Stars and created their teams with both Western Conference and Eastern Conference players.

The All Star game had been receiving criticism over the past few years because of lack of competitiveness and lack of intensity from the players, so a change needed to be made. However, as soon as the format was announced back in the winter of 2017, CBS Sports stated in an article.

CBS Sports was reporting on the format change and criticizing it. CBS talked about how the game had always been West vs. East and they shouldn’t change the tradition. CBS also argued how it didn’t even think changing the format in this way would help the players compete harder.

After the game this past Sunday, the league and reporters thought the game was a success. Not only was the game competitive, but it was also close and came down to the final possession.

CBS Sports published a second article almost immediately after the game stating how the new format worked and how it could keep getting better over the next few years. The article went into heavy detail about why the format worked and the reporter did well on explaining the pros and the cons of the format to the reader.

Sports Illustrated also put out an article on Monday morning talking about how the new All Star game was good for the sport overall and how the NBA players’ symbolic value is what’s important to the fans. So, the players needed to play hard in order to show the fans that they do care about their voices and their opinions.

A reporter named Ben Golliver tweeted a graph showing that the 2018 All Star game was the lowest scoring since 2013 and the closest margin since 2012, which means there was a lot more defense being played the players really cared about winning.

Overall, reporters did a good job analyzing and reporting this game especially after all the anticipation and expectations from this new format.