2023 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Jayson Tatum

Tatum scored a single-game All-Star record 55 points, and the combined 359 points set a new scoring record for the game.

Box score

Draft format continued: captains that year were the top two vote-getters, Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James.

Bench (10+ points): Damian Lillard (26), Pascal Siakam (12)

Bench (10+ points): Jaylen Brown (35), Tyrese Haliburton (18), Anthony Edwards (12), Julius Randle (11)

Game context

The 2023 All-Star Game, played February 19 at Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City, produced the single greatest individual scoring performance in the event's history to that point. Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics scored 55 points, breaking Anthony Davis's 2017 record of 52, and his eruption powered Team Giannis to a 184-175 win over Team LeBron in a game that, at 359 combined points, also set a new all-time scoring record for the event. Tatum's MVP-winning performance came in the game's final year using the draft format, giving him a signature individual moment right before the league reverted to the traditional East-versus-West setup the following season. The game marked a symbolically important first for the draft era: it was Team Giannis's first tournament-style win in the format's history, and, conversely, Team LeBron's first loss, snapping a string of five consecutive draft-format victories for LeBron James's squads dating back to the format's 2018 debut. Damian Lillard supplied the deciding blow, hitting the go-ahead three-pointer that sealed the win for Team Giannis under the Elam Ending's untimed, target-score fourth quarter — the target that year having been set at 182, the leading team's total after three quarters plus 24. Jaylen Brown, Tatum's Celtics teammate, provided strong secondary support with 14 rebounds, giving Team Giannis a rebounding edge that helped control extra possessions throughout the closely contested finish. The captains that year were LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo, the top two overall vote-getters, rather than James facing a Curry-, Durant-, or other-named counterpart as in prior seasons — Team LeBron and Team Giannis had also met in the format's second-ever edition back in 2020, making this the draft era's only rematch of the same two named captains. As the last game before the reversion to conference play, the 2023 edition is frequently cited by NBA observers as something of a high-water mark for the draft format's scoring-friendly, star-driven appeal even as league officials were simultaneously growing more concerned that the format had drifted too far toward exhibition-style, minimal-defense basketball; Tatum's 55-point, record-setting performance, while spectacular as individual theater, was also emblematic of exactly the kind of unchallenged, foul-optional offensive freedom that critics increasingly argued had made the games less competitively credible, feeding directly into the decision to bring back the East-West format for 2024. Tatum's record itself proved short-lived on the counting-stat leaderboard in a broader sense — the very next format experiment, 2024's East-West revival, produced an even higher team scoring total — but his 55-point individual mark stood untouched through the following several editions and remains, of the games covered by this file's 2001-2026 scope, the highest single-game scoring total recorded by any player.

Sources

• Wikipedia — 2023 NBA All-Star Game
• Basketball-Reference — NBA All-Star Game History