The 2026 NBA All-Star Game was an unquestioned success. The convoluted USA vs. the World format made the game competitive for three of the four quarters, which hasn’t happened in at least three decades. Watching the best players in the world participate in a game that somewhat resembled basketball was awesome. For once, the product actually lived up to the billing

This, however, isn’t the first time an innovation format worked in its initial go-around. The 2018 version, after they introduced team captains, had an exciting ending. And the 2020 game that used the Elam ending was one of the best finishes in recent memory.

The league hasn’t struggled to find new formats that work. The issue has been making them do so for more than just one season. Each of the previous changes led to the same issues the following year, which inevitably caused additional alterations.

Like most of the issues the NBA has been trying to tackle under Adam Silver, they’re trying to fix it by not addressing the actual problem.

The All-Star Game format wasn’t broken on its own. There’s a reason basketball is played under the same rules around the world. The real issue was a lack of effort from the players. And there’s no way to really legislate around that with format changes.

The NBA has tried to fix other issues in similar heavy-handed ways.

They wanted to increase the competitiveness of games down the stretch, so they made up the Play-In Tournament. They wanted to make games more meaningful at the beginning of the season, so they created the NBA Cup. They wanted to end load management, so they instituted a 65-game minimum requirement for awards. They wanted to limit tanking, so they flattened the lottery odds and may make further changes.

These innovations are all somewhat justified on their own, but none of them have meaningfully addressed the actual long-term issues.

The problem with playoff seeding not mattering and the start of the season dragging is the fact that too many teams make the playoffs. If you wanted the regular season to really mean something, you’d cut the number of playoff participants to four in each conference. Although, that wouldn’t seriously be discussed since the league would never get rid of an entire playoff round.

Load management is needed because the regular season is too long, given how fast the game is played. But the league isn’t going to attack either of those issues. They don’t want to shorten the season, and they aren’t going to move to a less offense-friendly style of play. So instead, we have the best player — Nikola Jokic — ineligible for regular-season awards.

And lastly, there’s nothing you can do to keep teams from being bad. Making it harder for them to improve through the draft is just going to keep them where they are, which encourages more teams to tank, instead of fewer.

The league isn’t interested in actually fixing the issues that they see within their product. Instead, they’re content to add band-aid solutions that help alleviate some of the symptoms, but do little to solve the core problem.

And every time you make one of these alterations, you’re signaling to everyone that this thing is broken. Nobody proposes drastic changes to something that is working fine.

In the end, the NBA is left waving giant red flags at known problems, while also not meaningfully confronting any of the root issues. This creates an environment where those paid to comment on the league spend most of their energy talking about what’s wrong and proposing narrow-minded solutions, instead of discussing what’s happening on the court.

The NFL has many of the same problems as the NBA, they just don’t seem to care. Teams tank down the stretch for draft position, some of their weekly on-field offerings are downright awful (I’m looking at you, Thursday Night Football), and the Pro Bowl is a complete joke.

But instead of drawing attention to those things, the NFL keeps rolling and highlights what is working.

When you create an environment that the NBA has, where it’s constantly talking about what’s wrong and trying to fix things that they really don’t have the financial incentive to solve, you only magnify the issues.

If they merely admitted that the All-Star Game was never great and just a glorified exhibition, you would’ve saved yourself from the annual negative press that comes after another disappointing weekend. If you just accepted that the playoffs were really what’s important — and teams should do whatever they can to position themselves best for them — then you’d have the ability to celebrate those three months. And if you just came to terms with bad teams existing and created a system that allowed them to get better, you wouldn’t have the same perennial losers at the bottom of the league year after year.

Or if you want to change these things, actually do so.

Yes, this All-Star Game was a success, but recent history tells us it won’t be next season. And until the league is merely okay with the All-Star Game being the same mediocre product it’s always been for anyone over the age of 18, it’s going to keep being stuck in this loop of inviting criticism and fixes, without being interested in truly solving the root problems. Which is where the association has been under Silver’s entire tenure.

No real fixes. Just temporary solutions that frustrate everyone eventually.