1987 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Tom Chambers

Box score

West won in overtime. MVP: Tom Chambers.

Bench (10+ points): Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (10), Rolando Blackman (29), Sleepy Floyd (14)

Bench (10+ points): Kevin McHale (16), Isiah Thomas (16)

Game context

The 1987 All-Star Game, played February 8 in Seattle's Kingdome — the city's second turn hosting the event, following 1974 — drew a then-record crowd of 34,275 to the domed stadium, part of a run of oversized dome crowds (Pontiac in 1979, this game, then Houston in 1989) that the league periodically chased for its midseason showcase. Michael Jordan, already the league's most popular player, led all All-Stars in fan voting with over 1.1 million ballots, but it was Seattle SuperSonics forward Tom Chambers, stepping into the Western Conference's starting lineup as an injury replacement for Ralph Sampson, who stole the show on his home floor. Chambers scored a game-high 34 points on 13-of-25 shooting, adding four rebounds, in a game that needed overtime to decide a winner. The East, coached by K.C. Jones, actually led for most of regulation — up 33-29 after one quarter and 107-100 through three — before Pat Riley's West rallied with a 40-33 fourth quarter to force overtime, then won the extra period 14-9 to complete the comeback, 154-149. Rolando Blackman was electric off the West's bench, scoring 29 points on 9-of-15 shooting including 11-of-13 from the free-throw line, while Hakeem Olajuwon anchored the middle with 13 rebounds. For the East, Moses Malone led all scorers with 27 points and a game-high 18 rebounds, and Julius Erving, in one of his final All-Star appearances before retirement later that year, added 22 points on 9-of-13 shooting. Isiah Thomas contributed 16 points and nine assists off the bench, and Jordan himself, still just 23 years old and in his third NBA season, scored 11 points with four assists, a comparatively quiet outing by his later All-Star standards. The 154-149 final score set a new record for combined points and total points scored in an All-Star Game at the time, surpassing the mark set just three years earlier in 1984, part of a broader trend in the mid-to-late 1980s of increasingly offense-heavy All-Star Games as the event leaned further into showcase spectacle over defensive competitiveness. Chambers's MVP award, coming as a replacement player rather than an original selection, remains one of the more memorable underdog-turned-star moments in the game's history, delivered in front of his own home fans in a building better suited to football than basketball. The record-setting 154-149 final score also came during a stretch in which Bird's Boston Celtics were the league's reigning power, having won the 1986 championship and en route to another Finals appearance that same June (a seven-game loss to the Lakers). Jordan, still three years from his first MVP award, was already the game's most popular draw by fan vote, even though on this particular night it was a replacement player, Chambers, who walked away with the trophy.

Sources

• Basketball-Reference — NBA All-Star Game History
• Basketball-Reference — NBA & ABA All-Star Game MVP (Kobe Bryant Trophy)
• Wikipedia — 1987 NBA All-Star Game
• Basketball-Reference — 1987 NBA All-Star Game Box Score