National Basketball Association (NBA) has tinkered with the format of the 2020 All Star Games in honour of the Late Los Angeles Lakers point guard, Kobe Bryant and local community organisations in Chicago.
The All-Star Game will take place on February 16 at the United Center in Chicago, with the game expected to reach fans in more than 200 countries and territories in more than 40 languages.
The NBA said that the new format for All-Star Game is designed to increase the level of competition throughout the game, provide additional excitement at the finish and make the outcome of every quarter count for charity.
The changes include a new fourth-quarter format that will honour the late Kobe Bryant, who earned 18 NBA All-Star selections and a record-tying four NBA All-Star Game MVP awards. The NBA stated that additional plans to honour Bryant during the game would be announced later.
In the 69th NBA All-Star Game, Team Giannis and Team LeBron will compete to win each of the first three quarters, all of which will start with the score of 0-0 and will be 12 minutes long. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, the game clock will be turned off and a Final Target Score will be set.
The Final Target Score will be determined by taking the leading team’s total cumulative score through three quarters and adding 24 points – the 24 representing Bryant’s jersey number for the final 10 seasons of his NBA career. The teams will then play an untimed fourth quarter and the first team to reach the Final.
As part of NBA All-Star 2020, more than $1 million will be contributed to Chicago community non-profit organisations through NBA Cares outreach efforts. These efforts will culminate during the NBA All-Star Game when each team will play for a Chicago-based charity beneficiary, as selected by team captains Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks and LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers.
The community organization selected by the winner of each of the first three quarters will receive $100,000 – a total of $300,000 donated to charity for those three quarters. The winner of each of the first three quarters will be the team with the higher score at the end of the 12-minute quarter.
The winning team in the NBA All-Star Game (i.e., the team that reaches the Final Target Score first) will earn $200,000 for its community organization.
If the first or second quarter ends in a tie, the $100,000 charity award for that quarter will be added to the next quarter’s award. If the third quarter ends in a tie, the $100,000 charity award for that quarter will be added to the award of the team that wins the NBA All-Star Game.
If one team wins each of the first three quarters and reaches the Final Target Score first, $500,000 will be donated to the winning team’s charity and $100,000 will be donated to the losing team’s charity.
