2004 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Shaquille O'Neal

Box score

Bench (10+ points): Kenyon Martin (17), Jason Kidd (14), Jamaal Magloire (19), Michael Redd (13)

Bench (10+ points): Ray Allen (16), Shaquille O'Neal (24)

Game context

The 2004 All-Star Game, played February 15 at the Staples Center, marked the first time Los Angeles had hosted the event since 1963 and the first time it was held at the arena that had become the Lakers' home. Fittingly, the local hero delivered: Shaquille O'Neal scored 24 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to win his second career All-Star MVP award, anchoring a West team that held on for a 136-132 win over an East side led in scoring by Charlotte/New Orleans Hornets big man Jamaal Magloire, who put up 19 points and 8 rebounds in a surprising standout turn for a player making just his first All-Star appearance. The West's roster was deep with future Hall of Famers — Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett (making his seventh straight selection), Yao Ming, and Steve Francis rounded out the starting five alongside O'Neal — and that collective talent proved enough to hold off the East's balanced attack. The game is remembered today for a striking footnote that had nothing to do with the final score: it was the only season in a 22-year stretch, running from LeBron James's rookie year through his mid-2020s prime, that James was not selected as an All-Star. James was a rookie in the 2003-04 season, ineligible for the vote that year under the league's eligibility rules of the time, and this remains the lone gap in what became one of the longest active All-Star selection streaks in league history once he debuted the following season and never missed again for two decades. Off the floor, the game also carried a coaching quirk: Sacramento's Rick Adelman, who had led the Western Conference the previous year, was ineligible to coach the West again under a league rule barring consecutive All-Star coaching assignments for the same coach, so Minnesota's Flip Saunders took the reins instead. Vince Carter led all players in fan voting for a fifth consecutive year, reflecting his continued popularity even as his Toronto Raptors struggled that season, while the East's reserve class introduced four first-time All-Stars — Kenyon Martin, Jamaal Magloire, Ron Artest, and Michael Redd — a group that signaled a changing of the guard among the conference's depth pieces. O'Neal's MVP award, won on his own home floor in the midst of what would prove to be his final full season as a Laker before his trade to Miami that summer, gave the game a valedictory quality for the Lakers' three-peat-era core, even though the team's on-court fortunes were already beginning to fray behind the scenes.

Sources

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