It’s less than a month into the new NBA media rights deal and Adam Silver’s office is jumping a little ahead. The league reportedly expects a massive profit through the 2025-26 season that’s spread across traditional channels like NBC and ESPN as well as streaming giants like Amazon Prime. Prime’s success with their sports library might give them confidence because fans aren’t buying into some of the conceptual changes coming this season. The biggest blowback has been to the new All-Star format. The underwhelming response to it could directly impact the NBA’s multi-billion expectation.

The warning comes from 4x All-Star Draymond Green. He closed out this week’s edition of his podcast with a delayed response to the new All-Star format. The NBA has rolled out a very complex selection process for a USA vs the World All-Star game. Fans could almost see who’s going to meet the nationality-based criteria and were not enthused.

The kind of response the news drew surprised even Green. “I must say, it was a little underwhelming — the support or the attention that this drew,” he said on the pod. His phrasing made it sound a little more terrifying than it should be.

The All-Star Weekend has been dogged with severe criticism the last few years. The lack of competitive spirit, player fatigue, and the same faces have made it duller than the regular season. The 2024 Olympics made fans campaign for a USA vs the World concept similar to how NHL has created the Four Nations excitement. The way the NBA is doing it though will likely not give players like Josh Giddey or Alperen Sengun a chance to win this popularity contest.

Seeing fans shun the ASG already concerns Green. “I think to me, that was an alarming sign. Like, this was announced and nobody cared. And it was shocking, because I thought going ‘USA versus the World’ would do that.”

The NBA should take note of Green’s concern. Because right now, the league’s expectations are very far from what fans expect.

NBA’s expectation disproportionate to Draymond Green’s reality check

While Draymond Green’s reaction to this news is a little delayed, it comes at a very crucial time. Recently, Boardroom.com revealed Adam Silver and his office’s goals for this season. They project an increase in revenue by at least 12%. Since the 2024-25 season raked in $12.75 billion, that would mean about $14.3 billion at the end of the 2025-26 season.

The projection comes through the new $76 billion media deal split across cable and streaming. Teams could earn around $143 million if profits grew and that could make bigger paydays for athletes. This is all a very fictional castle in the air though.

The 2025 All-Star Weekend saw a 13% decrease in viewership. The NBA Finals averaged low viewership and was blamed on small market teams, instead of, you know, making them more accessible to fans. The entire season also saw a 2% decline in viewership.

Now Inside the NBA is on limited viewing on ESPN while Michael Jordan has sporadic pre-recorded appearances on NBC. We’re also competing with the NFL for Christmas Day viewership now. At such a time, the All-Star format is not getting the response needed.

Draymond Green summarized it ominously. “I think what this showed to me was very clear: unless the NBA does something like hockey did last year, where they had the Four Nations. Even in staging this as, ‘Oh man, it’s still the All-Star Game.’ I just don’t think the excitement is there,” Green added. “The lackluster response to this news really just showed me, man, All-Star may really be dead. I think people have just moved on from the whole entire idea.”

Dray is right. The announcement of the All-Star selection process turned off fans. A collective of NBA employees and media personalities will vote for players to be divided into three American teams and one international team with eight-man rosters. That means there will be very little room for others after Jokic, Wemby, Doncic, SGA are selected. If there’s no equal splits, Silver has the power to force it by handpicking players.

Fans also don’t like the round robin tournament format. It’s near similar to last ASG weekend where the TNT crew had four teams compete in very short games. It was too quick and too short to be entertaining. Worse still, if players’ efforts in regular season aren’t going to be rewarded with All-Star nods, their fans are losing any emotional investment into it.

That makes the $12% revenue goal seem less than achievable. Like Draymond, fans are also hoping the All-Star format gets fixed before it’s too late.