Product Can't Paper Over a Broken Experience
NBA All-Star 2026 had the best product lineup in years and a 95% empty arena. That tells you everything.
Twenty-plus sneaker releases for All-Star Weekend. Special colorways. Player exclusives. Limited editions. The usual product dump that’s supposed to make February feel important.
I can’t shake the feeling they’re not enough.
It’s not the shoes’ fault. Some of them are legitimately great. The Nike Kobe 6 Protro “3D” ($200) is a proper throwback to the 2011 All-Star Game in LA, when Kobe took home MVP with 37 points and 14 rebounds. That anaglyph aesthetic with the mismatched red and blue... it’s legitimately clever design work. The Fragment x Union x Air Jordan 1 triple collaboration that dropped Saturday is objectively one of the best releases of the year, fusing two of the most prestigious Jordan Brand partners into a single silhouette with that “Urahara Stitch” craftsmanship.
Nike’s “Warning Label” pack spanning the LeBron 23, Zoom Freak 7, Book 2, KD 18, Sabrina 3, and multiple other models is one of their most cohesive All-Star collections in recent memory. New Balance debuting the P350 and P400 performance models shows they’re serious about competing in the basketball space.
But when I see them, all I can think about is that 95% empty arena during Rising Stars, the lackluster Slam Dunk Contest that felt more obligatory than electric, and the entire weekend that Complex properly diagnosed as fundamentally broken.
The NBA tried something different this year... USA vs. World format, round-robin tournament, all the packaging that’s supposed to recapture magic. NBC brought back Roundball Rock, Bob Costas did the intro, they even got Michael Jordan for pre-recorded segments. Nostalgia overload.
But you can’t nostalgize your way out of a structural problem.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Viewership has cratered from 8 million in 2013 to barely scraping 5 million the past few years. Commissioner Adam Silver has openly criticized players for lack of effort. The Dunk Contest yielded what most observers called “disappointingly mediocre” performances, with Miami’s Keshad Johnson winning with consistent but forgettable dunks over Spurs rookie Carter Bryant.
Rising Stars tickets were going for $500-700. The arena stayed empty. Nobody showed up.
And then there’s the injury list. Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander all missed the game. Three of the biggest names, three of the players fans actually wanted to see... sidelined. Brandon Ingram, De’Aaron Fox, and Alperen Şengün stepped in as replacements. No disrespect to any of them, but that’s not who people tune in for.
The USA vs. World format was supposed to add stakes, create natural rivalries, lean into the global game. But when Team World lost both Giannis and SGA to injuries, what was left of that narrative? The concept might have worked, but execution requires the stars to actually show up.
The one genuine bright spot? Damian Lillard winning the 3-Point Contest for the third time while recovering from a torn Achilles tendon. Lillard hasn’t played an NBA game all season. He tore his Achilles on April 27, 2025, underwent surgery in May, and spent the entire year rehabbing. But he showed up to All-Star Weekend, scored 29 points in the finals, and joined Larry Bird and Craig Hodges as the only three-time winners of the competition.
That moment mattered. Not because of the format or the marketing or the product tie-ins, but because Lillard represented something real. As he said afterward, “I do think I represent strength. We are athletes, so when we go through injury people act like it’s the end of the world... but people go through way worse. For me it was more about representing strength.”
That’s the kind of authentic moment All-Star Weekend used to be built on. One player, one story, one performance that connects. Not 20 sneaker releases fighting for attention.
Streaming Fragmentation
And speaking of fighting for attention... you needed a Peacock subscription to watch most of this weekend. $10.99 a month for ad-supported, $16.99 for ad-free. Rising Stars was Peacock-only. The HBCU Classic was Peacock-only. The Celebrity Game aired on ESPN, the main events were split between NBC and Peacock.
Remember when everyone just watched All-Star Weekend in one place? NBC… TNT… had it for years. Even if it was split between the two, you knew where to find it. Now you’re juggling streaming services, checking which events are where, deciding if it’s worth another subscription just to watch the Rising Stars game.
I’ll be honest... I watched more highlights on YouTube this year than I did actual events. Thirty-second clips, algorithm-curated moments, the best dunks without sitting through the full contest. I’m not alone in that. The fragmentation makes it easier to just wait for the clips than commit to watching live.
That changes the experience fundamentally. You’re not building anticipation, you’re not watching narratives unfold, you’re not invested in the moment. You’re consuming content after the fact, decontextualized, optimized for engagement rather than storytelling.
The NBA and NBC are banking on nostalgia pulling people in. Roundball Rock, Bob Costas, the whole “NBA on NBC is back” campaign. But nostalgia only works if the product matches the memory. And asking people to subscribe to another streaming service to watch a watered-down version of what All-Star Weekend used to be... that’s not a winning formula.
