2022 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Stephen Curry

Box score

Draft format continued: captains LeBron James and Kevin Durant.

Bench (10+ points): Darius Garland (13), Jarrett Allen (10)

Bench (10+ points): LaMelo Ball (18), Devin Booker (20), Dejounte Murray (17), Zach LaVine (12)

Game context

The 2022 All-Star Game, played February 20 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland — the city's third time hosting the event — coincided with the league's celebration of its 75th anniversary season, giving the broadcast an extra layer of historical retrospective built around the previously announced list of the 75 greatest players in NBA history. On the court, Stephen Curry delivered one of the most explosive shooting performances the exhibition had ever seen, scoring 50 points while making 16 three-pointers, setting All-Star records for threes made in a quarter (6), in a half (8), and in a full game. Fully 48 of his 50 points came from beyond the arc, an almost unprecedented degree of reliance on the three-point shot even by the standards of an era already defined by rapidly increasing three-point volume; his total fell two points short of Anthony Davis's 2017 single-game scoring record of 52. Curry's outburst earned him the game's MVP award and instantly became one of the signature individual highlights of the draft-format era. The game still came down to the wire despite Curry's fireworks: with the Elam Ending's untimed fourth quarter targeting a score of 163 (the leading team's total after three quarters plus 24), LeBron James delivered the deciding basket himself, a turnaround fadeaway jumper that served as a walk-off winner to close out the 163-160 victory. The win was Team LeBron's fifth consecutive All-Star victory dating back to the draft format's 2018 debut, an unusually one-sided run of team success for a captain who, unlike Curry that particular year, had not needed to be the game's statistical star to keep winning; James's teams had now won every single draft-format game to that point, a streak that would only be snapped when Team Giannis finally beat Team LeBron the following year. The first three quarters, played under the format's now-standard charity-incentive structure, saw Team LeBron win the opening period, Team Durant (led by Kevin Durant as the other captain) take the second, and the two teams tie the third, before the Elam Ending decided matters in the fourth. The broadcast itself offered an unusually rich viewing experience for the 75th-anniversary occasion, including an alternate TNT/TBS simulcast featuring the network's popular "Inside the NBA" studio panel — Shaquille O'Neal, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson — providing live commentary over the game feed, a broadcast format innovation that proved popular enough to be repeated in later years and that, notably, foreshadowed the direct on-court roles Shaq, Barkley, and Smith would take on just three years later as team-drafting captains in the 2025 mini-tournament format.

Sources

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