NBA confirms that the All-Star Game will feature a U.S. vs. the World format this season

It's happening: The U.S. vs. the World is finally a done deal and will be the format for this season's NBA All-Star Game.

The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association unveiled the long-awaited plan Tuesday night, after months of trying to figure out the latest way to spark renewed interest in the league's midseason contest.

The game — which really will be a round-robin tournament of games — will be played Sunday, Feb. 15, starting at 5 p.m. Eastern at Intuit Dome, the Los Angeles Clippers' arena in Inglewood, California. It'll be aired on NBC at just about the midway point of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, which will also be broadcast on NBC's family of networks.

And part of what NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and other stakeholders liked about trying the U.S. vs. the World format was how the timing coincides with those Milan Cortina Games and the surge of national pride that people around the world get during an Olympics.

“I think it’s going to be exciting for people to watch," Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo said earlier this season when asked about the idea of U.S. vs. the World.

"I’m going to play hard. I’ve always been playing hard, but I think it’s going to put a little bit more juice to the game. … All players have ego. Nobody wants to be embarrassed. Guys will play harder because they don’t want to become — I don’t know how you say this — they don’t want to become viral. I’m excited for this format.”

Players born outside of the U.S. have won each of the last seven MVP awards, each of the last four NBA scoring titles, and each of the last five rebounding titles. Canada's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was MVP, NBA Finals MVP, the league's scoring champion and led Oklahoma City to the NBA title last season.

While the NBA had made clear for several weeks that U.S. vs. the World was going to happen — it was even talked about at last season All-Star weekend in San Francisco — some elements of the format were a mystery until Tuesday.

There will be three teams of at least eight players. Games will be one standard NBA quarter, or 12 minutes long.

Team A will play Team B in Game 1. The winner of that game will play Team C in Game 2. The loser of Game 1 will play Team C in Game 3.

The teams with the best two records will play in the championship game. If all three teams are 1-1, point differential would be the tiebreaker.

The end result, the NBA hopes, is four standard quarters — the equivalent of a typical game.

Let's start with the voting. It will be basically the same as it has been in recent years, with one notable tweak — the NBA is eliminating the frontcourt and backcourt position designations for players.

Each ballot from fans will include five players from the Eastern Conference, five players from the Western Conference. Positions will not matter, nor will nationalities. The fan ballots will be used as part of a formula to identify the starters; fan votes will be weighted at 50%, with NBA player voting accounting for 25% and voting from a panel of writers and broadcasters who cover the league making up the final 25%.

From there, 10 “starters” — five East, five West — will be chosen.

The 14 reserves, seven from each conference, will be selected in balloting by the league's head coaches.

This is where it gets a little tricky.

The NBA is roughly two-thirds American players, one-third international players. So, the plan is to have two eight-man teams of American players (or 16 total) and one eight-man team of international players.

But there's no guarantee that exactly 16 American players and exactly eight international players will emerge from the voting. And it's entirely possible that American players could wind up playing for the international team if they have ties to other countries.

If the voting doesn't result in having a pool of 16 American and eight international players, Silver will add players until the minimum is met. In those cases, some teams will have more than eight players on their rosters.

This one is unclear.

The NBA says the “process for assigning players to the two U.S. teams will be determined at a later date.” Same goes for things like how coaches will be selected (since it seems like three head coaches will be needed instead of the customary two) and how the player pool of award money will work.

The NBA has wanted a more competitive All-Star Game for years.

It tried having captains like Antetokounmpo, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant pick their own rosters. It tried having a “target score” finish, which made the 2020 game in Chicago one of the most memorable in years as the league celebrated the life of Kobe Bryant.

But the 2024 game in Indianapolis — with a 211-186 final score — was the last straw in many respects. The league tried a mini-tournament last season, with the winners of the Rising Stars game between NBA rookies and sophomores joining three teams of actual All-Stars, and that format ended up being largely panned.

Vince Carter, one of the game's great dunkers, used his NBC platform Tuesday night to urge more players to take part in the slam dunk contest — which Mac McClung has won in each of the last three seasons. McClung said going into last year's contest that he wasn't planning to participate again in 2026.

Carter, in his role as an NBC analyst, said he’d like to see Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards, Memphis’ Ja Morant, New Orleans’ Zion Williamson, Portland’s Shaedon Sharpe, Chicago’s Matas Buzelis, San Antonio’s Stephon Castle, Philadelphia’s VJ Edgecombe and Indiana’s Johnny Furphy in this season’s dunk contest.

“We’re looking for the wow,” Carter said. “We want guys that can wow us.”

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba

Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic celebrates after scoring as Charlotte Hornets forward Miles Bridges looks on during the second half of an NBA basketball game Monday, Nov. 10, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander reacts on the bench after a basket during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Los Angeles Clippers, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jayne Kamin-Oncea)

Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, right, shoots for a basket as Miami Heat center Kel'el Ware defends in the second half of an NBA basketball game Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) shoots a three-pointer against Dallas Mavericks center Moussa Cisse (30) during the second half of an NBA basketball game in Dallas, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — As Iran returned to uneasy calm after a wave of protests that drew a bloody crackdown, a senior hard-line cleric called Friday for the death penalty for detained demonstrators and directly threatened U.S. President Donald Trump — evidence of the rage gripping authorities in the Islamic Republic.

Harsh repression that has left several thousand people dead appears to have succeeded in stifling demonstrations that began Dec. 28 over Iran’s ailing economy and morphed into protests directly challenging the country’s theocracy.

There have been no signs of protests for days in Tehran, where shopping and street life have returned to outward normality, though a week-old internet blackout continued. Authorities have not reported any unrest elsewhere in the country.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency on Friday put the death toll, at 2,797. The number continues to rise.

Iran's exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi urged the U.S. to make good on its pledge to intervene, calling Trump “a man of his word.”

Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami's sermon, carried by Iranian state radio, sparked chants from those gathered for prayers, including: “Armed hypocrites should be put to death!” Executions, as well as the killing of peaceful protesters, are two of the red lines laid down by Trump for possible military action against Iran.

Khatami, a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts and Guardian Council long known for his hard-line views, described the protesters as the “butlers” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “Trump’s soldiers.” He insisted their plans “imagined disintegrating the country.”

“They should wait for hard revenge from the system,” Khatami said of Netanyahu and Trump. “Americans and Zionists should not expect peace.”

His fiery speech came as allies of Iran and the United States alike sought to defuse tensions. Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke Friday to both Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Israel's Netanyahu, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Peskov said “the situation in the region is quite tense, and the president is continuing his efforts to help de-escalate it.”

Russia had previously kept largely quiet about the protests. Moscow has watched several key allies suffer blows as its resources and focus are consumed by its 4-year-old war against Ukraine, including the downfall of Syria’s former President Bashar Assad in 2024, last year’s U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and the U.S. seizure of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro this month.

Days after Trump pledged “help is on its way” for the protesters, both the demonstrations and the prospect of imminent U.S. retaliation appeared to have receded. One diplomat told The Associated Press that top officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar had raised concerns with Trump that a U.S. military intervention would shake the global economy and destabilize an already volatile region.

Yet the Trump administration has warned it will act if Iran executes detained protesters. Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown by Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, said he still believes the president's promise of assistance.

“I believe the president is a man of his word," Pahlavi told reporters in Washington. He added that "regardless of whether action is taken or not, we as Iranians have no choice to carry on the fight.“

Despite support by diehard monarchists in the diaspora, Pahlavi has struggled to gain wider appeal within Iran. But that has not stopped him from presenting himself as the transitional leader of Iran if the regime were to fall.

Iran and the U.S. traded angry accusations Thursday at a session of the United Nations Security Council, with U.S. ambassador Mike Waltz saying that Trump “has made it clear that all options are on the table to stop the slaughter.”

Gholam Hossein Darzi, the deputy Iranian ambassador to the U.N., blasted the U.S. for what he said was American “direct involvement in steering unrest in Iran to violence.”

Khatami, the hard-line cleric, also provided the first overall statistics on damage from the protests, claiming 350 mosques, 126 prayer halls and 20 other holy places had sustained damage. Another 80 homes of Friday prayer leaders — an important position within Iran's theocracy — were also damaged, likely underlining the anger demonstrators felt toward symbols of the government.

He said 400 hospitals, 106 ambulance, 71 fire department vehicles and another 50 emergency vehicles also sustained damage.

Even as protests appeared to have been smothered inside Iran, thousands of exiled Iranians and their supporters have taken to the streets in cities across Europe to shout out their rage at the government of the Islamic Republic.

Amid the continuing internet shutdown, some Iranians crossed borders to communicate with the outside world. At a border crossing in Turkey’s eastern province of Van, a trickle of Iranians crossing Friday said they were traveling to get around the communications blackout.

“I will go back to Iran after they open the internet,” said a traveler who gave only his first name, Mehdi, out of security concerns.

Also crossing the border were some Turkish citizens escaping the unrest in Iran.

Mehmet Önder, 47, was in Tehran for his textiles business when the protests erupted. He said laid low in his hotel until it was shut for security reasons, then stayed with one of his customers until he was able to return to Turkey.

Although he did not venture into the streets, Önder said he heard heavy gunfire.

“I understand guns, because I served in the military in the southeast of Turkey,” he said. “The guns they were firing were not simple weapons. They were machine-guns.”

In a sign of the conflict’s potential to spill over borders, a Kurdish separatist group in Iraq said it has launched attacks on Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days in retaliation for Tehran’s crackdown on protests.

A representative of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, said its members have “played a role in the protests through both financial support and armed operations to defend protesters when needed.” The group said the attacks were launched by members of its military wing based inside Iran.

The death toll of at least 2,797, provided by the Human Rights Activists News Agency, exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution.

The agency has been accurate throughout years of demonstrations, relying on a network of activists inside Iran that confirms all reported fatalities. The AP has been unable to independently confirm the toll. Iran's government has not provided casualty figures.

Amiri reported from New York.

Iranian opposition leader Reza Pahlavi speaks during a news conference on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

A woman crosses an intersection in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People cross an intersection in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Vehicles drive in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

A street vendor adjusts clothes for sale in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Vehicles drive in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

FILE - Iranian senior cleric Ahmad Khatami delivers his sermon during Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 5, 2018. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)