1977 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Julius Erving

Box score

Julius Erving won MVP.

Bench (10+ points): Rick Barry (18), Phil Smith (13), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (21), Bob Lanier (17)

Bench (10+ points): Jo Jo White (10), Elvin Hayes (12)

Game context

The 1977 All-Star Game, played February 13 at the MECCA Arena in Milwaukee, was the first held after the ABA-NBA merger folded four rival-league franchises into the NBA that summer, and it was also the first All-Star Game played on a Sunday afternoon rather than a weeknight, a scheduling shift the league would keep for good. Twelve former ABA players suited up, a visible sign of how quickly the merger had reshaped the league's talent pool. Milwaukee's lone turn as host drew a comparatively modest 10,938 fans to the MECCA. The game swung dramatically over its four quarters. Gene Shue's East team came out fast, leading 34-23 after one quarter and 68-58 at halftime, but Larry Brown's West rallied behind a 39-21 third-quarter swing that flipped the East's halftime lead into a 97-89 West edge entering the fourth. Bob McAdoo tried to hold the East together, scoring 14 of his game-high-tying 30 points in the final period alone, but the West held on to close it out, 125-124. Despite playing for the losing team, Philadelphia 76ers forward Julius Erving was named MVP after scoring 30 points, becoming just the second player in All-Star Game history to win the award in a losing effort. It was Erving's first NBA All-Star Game appearance — following years of ABA stardom with the Nets — and the start of what would become eleven consecutive All-Star selections for him in the NBA alone. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (21 points) and Paul Westphal (20 points) led the winning West effort. Injuries shaped both rosters: Bill Walton and Dave Cowens, two of the league's premier centers, were both sidelined and unable to play. The game's format and personnel were themselves a live symbol of the merger's effects — the East and West conferences for the first time drew from a genuinely unified league rather than two competing ones, with ABA holdovers like Erving, George Gervin, Dan Issel, and Moses Malone now filling out All-Star rosters that had been NBA-only a year earlier. Earl Strom and Lee Jones officiated, both veteran referees who had transitioned along with the merger's broader integration of front-office and on-court personnel between the two leagues. The 1977 game, with its come-from-ahead finish and an MVP award going to the losing side's best player, set an early tone for how competitive and unpredictable these newly unified all-star showcases could be, even as the game overall was still evolving from more of a genuine contest toward the increasingly offense-first exhibition it would become in later decades.

Sources

• Basketball-Reference — NBA All-Star Game History
• Basketball-Reference — NBA & ABA All-Star Game MVP (Kobe Bryant Trophy)
• Wikipedia — 1977 NBA All-Star Game