Nick Wright offers solution for NBA All-Star Game: ‘White guys vs. Black guys’

As the NBA All-Star Game continues to fade into oblivion, Nick Wright has a way of bringing it back like never before.

The NBA All-Star Game used to be a fun, competitive and even intense product. But in recent years, it’s morphed into a waste of time that garners more backlash and criticism than celebration. It was the Eastern vs Western Conference, and no one cared. It was a draft headlined by LeBron James and Kevin Durant as team captains, and no one cared. It was a weird tournament style event, and no one cared. This year the NBA adopted a USA vs World format, and already, it seems like no one will care.

Amid the NBA’s continued attempts at retooling the event to save it from completely rotting away, Nick Wright joined The Bill Simmons Podcast this week where he was asked whether the game was still fixable. And Wright proved it is.

The only NBA All-Star Game fix that @getnickwright thinks would actually work at this point 😂 pic.twitter.com/Z0snvhdMvi

— The Ringer (@ringer) February 11, 2026

“It’s fixable in four years if your guy Kon Knueppel continues on this trajectory,” Wright began. “And we just have to say, you know what? PC headlines be damned. White guys vs. Black guys. Luka, Joker, Flagg, Reaves, Knueppel against Wemby, whomever. There would be a real edge to the game. It would get a lot of attention.”

Based on the replies, it seems like the people are interested. It’s amazing that it took until now for someone to think about this. Although, imagine trying this in the 90s? John Stockton might be one of the best point guards of all-time, but you can’t expect him to do much with Luc Longley and Toni Kukoč going up against the likes of Michael Jordan, Shaq, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and the rest of the usual All-Stars. We haven’t seen this tried since the Harlem Globetrotters beat the Minneapolis Lakers in 1948. But as Wright notes, times are changing.

“We are getting close to a place where it would be like, ‘Oh, that would be a good game!’ There hasn’t been a moment in the NBA in the last 50 years where if that ended up just by chance being the game, you could see either team winning.”

At least Wright is trying to make the NBA All-Star Game interesting again, even if this idea was somewhat flippant. The players haven’t helped the cause, and everything the league tries just seems to be mocked.

But while this idea has the potential to become the most interesting All-Star event ever, it might come with some toxic interest. On the other hand, people have a habit of putting a toxic spin on just about everything anyway.

“In the meantime, I don’t know what the hell you do,” Wright added.