2003 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Kevin Garnett

The highest-scoring All-Star Game to that point, decided in double overtime; also Michael Jordan's final All-Star appearance.

Box score

West won in double overtime.

Bench (10+ points): Jason Kidd (11), Jamal Mashburn (10)

Bench (10+ points): Shaquille O'Neal (19)

Game context

The 2003 All-Star Game, the first edition broadcast on cable (TNT took over the game from network television that year), became a showcase for Michael Jordan's farewell. Playing his final All-Star Game in his last NBA season with the Washington Wizards, Jordan was gifted the start by Vince Carter, who voluntarily relinquished his own starting spot so that Jordan could begin the game as a starter one last time — a gesture widely covered as one of the more graceful tributes of the era. Jordan responded by helping stake the East to a late lead: with 4.8 seconds left in the first overtime, his basket put the East up 138-136, seemingly sealing a storybook finish. But Jermaine O'Neal fouled Kobe Bryant on a three-point attempt with one second remaining, and Bryant calmly made two of three free throws to force a second overtime — the first double-overtime game in All-Star history. In that second extra period, Kevin Garnett took over. The Minnesota Timberwolves forward, then in the midst of an MVP-caliber regular season that would culminate in the league's Most Valuable Player award a few months later, scored several of his points on jumpers over a smaller Vince Carter in the paint, part of a stat line that finished at 37 points, 9 rebounds, and 5 steals — comfortably the best of his career in this event and enough to earn him All-Star MVP honors as the West pulled away in the second overtime to win 155-145, the highest-scoring All-Star Game in league history to that point. Allen Iverson led the East with 35 points in the losing effort, and Yao Ming, in his rookie season, became the first rookie to start an All-Star Game since 1995, a marker of the Rockets center's rapid ascension and the NBA's growing international reach. The game, played at Philips Arena in Atlanta, also featured a Mariah Carey halftime tribute built around Jordan's career, underscoring how thoroughly the weekend had been reframed as a send-off for the sport's most famous player even as the game itself, on the floor, turned into a legitimately dramatic, hard-fought double-overtime classic rather than a ceremonial victory lap. Garnett's MVP award, sandwiched between Jordan's emotional farewell and Bryant's clutch free throws, is remembered as much for the theater surrounding it as for the individual box score, but the 155-145 final remains one of the signature high-scoring shootouts of the pre-format-change East-West era.

Sources

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