1979 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: David Thompson

Box score

Bench (10+ points): Dennis Johnson (12), Maurice Lucas (10)

Bench (10+ points): Bob Lanier (10), Elvin Hayes (13)

Game context

The 29th NBA All-Star Game moved out of a traditional arena entirely, staged February 4, 1979, inside the Pontiac Silverdome, home of the NFL's Detroit Lions, in front of a football-sized crowd of 31,745 — a scale of attendance no basketball-specific arena of the era could match, and the first time the event had been played inside a dome. It was the third time the Detroit Pistons had hosted the game. The rosters were notable for a genuine historical quirk: for the first time since the All-Star Game's 1951 debut, neither the Boston Celtics nor the New York Knicks had a single player selected, a reflection of both franchises' down years in the late 1970s. Denver Nuggets forward David Thompson was named MVP for the West's 134-129 win, scoring 25 points on efficient shooting to go with five rebounds and two assists in a game that never saw either side pull decisively away. The West's George McGinnis, Thompson's Denver teammate, added 16 points, and Paul Westphal chipped in 17 with five assists as Lenny Wilkens's squad outlasted Dick Motta's East group across four back-and-forth quarters (36-27-24-30 for the West against 27-31-40-31 for the East). Julius Erving led all scorers with 29 points, eight rebounds, and five assists in the loss, and San Antonio's George Gervin nearly matched him with 26 points, but the East's supporting cast could not keep pace — Elvin Hayes added 13 points and 13 rebounds off the bench, and Bob Lanier chipped in 10 points and four assists, but Philadelphia's Doug Collins, initially selected, was unable to play because of injury and was replaced on the roster by Lanier. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, playing alongside Thompson and McGinnis in the West's starting five, added 11 points and eight rebounds in a support role rather than as the game's primary scoring threat. Beyond the novelty of the setting, the 1979 game is remembered as a snapshot of a league in transition: the two most storied Eastern Conference franchises, Boston and New York, were entirely absent from the rosters for the only time in the game's history, while newer stars and recent ABA transplants like Thompson, Gervin, and McGinnis increasingly defined the sport's on-court identity. The football-stadium setting itself, tried here for the first time, would recur periodically over the following decades (Houston's Astrodome in 1989, Dallas's Cowboys Stadium in 2010) whenever the league wanted to chase a larger live gate than a conventional arena could offer.

Sources

• Basketball-Reference — NBA All-Star Game History
• Basketball-Reference — NBA & ABA All-Star Game MVP (Kobe Bryant Trophy)
• Wikipedia — 1979 NBA All-Star Game
• Basketball-Reference — 1979 NBA All-Star Game Box Score