Los Angeles, Not Milwaukee, Wins NBA All-Star Game
Despite prior public commitment from commissioner, Bucks have yet to land marquee event.
The 2020-2021 championship ring ceremony at Fiserv Forum. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
Milwaukee is again on the losing end of an attempt to host the NBA All-Star Game.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced Tuesday that the 2026 game, which draws thousands of visitors, will be held in California at the Los Angeles Clippers’ Intuit Dome. The 2024 weekend-long event, scheduled for next month, will take place in Indianapolis. The 2025 event is already scheduled to take place in San Francisco at the Chase Center.
Since opening Fiserv Forum in 2018, the Milwaukee Bucks have bid for the weekend-long event multiple times. Silver, the NBA’s top official, previously promised to bring the game to the city.
“We made the commitment when the shovel went in the ground for this building that we were going to bring the All-Star Game here,” said Silver in a 2018 interview with the Bucks before the first regular season game played at the arena. “So now we just have to pull out calendars and figure out what year makes the most sense.”
But two newer stadiums have now leapfrogged the city. The Chase Center, home of the Golden State Warriors, opened in 2019. The Intuit Dome will open later this year.
A series of existing buildings in the Midwest have also landed the game since Fiserv Forum opened. The 2020 game was held in Chicago, the pandemic-canceled 2021 game was to be held in Indianapolis (rescheduled for next month), the 2022 game was held in Cleveland and the 2023 game was held in Salt Lake City. Silver, in 2023, said the Salt Lake City event generated 33,000 hotel room nights.
The Bucks, following the 2023 event, confirmed the team was bidding for the 2025 and 2026 games. But the Warriors were announced as the 2025 event host in November, and late last week news leaked that the Clippers and owner Steve Ballmer would host the 2026 event. The Bucks did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
The annual event takes place in mid-February and includes rising stars and celebrity games that take place on Friday, a slam dunk contest, three-point shootout and skills challenge on Saturday night, a minor league (G-League) showcase game played Sunday afternoon and the actual All-Star Game on Sunday night. All of those events are nationally televised. A series of other events and parties are also held.
Officials affiliated with the league have previously confirmed that the host city is expected to have 6,000 hotel rooms of four-star quality or better. Milwaukee, despite a hotel building boom and a new 207-room hotel across from the arena, still falls short of that benchmark, but previously navigated hotel concerns to land the 2020 Democratic National Convention and 2024 Republican National Convention.
The inability to land an All-Star game hasn’t kept Fiserv Forum and Milwaukee from receiving national attention. The arena, and the crowds outside of it, were showcased when the Bucks won the 2021 NBA title. The arena, last August, was the site of the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle and will be the central venue of the upcoming political convention.
Milwaukee hosted the game once, in 1977. The game was held at what is now the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena and was the first game held following the merger of the NBA and ABA leagues. No members of the Bucks appeared in the game, but the game featured former Bucks star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Marquette legend Maurice Lucas, future Bucks center Bob Lanier and the high-flying Julius Erving, who won the MVP award. The Bradley Center never hosted the game.
Oklahoma City, Memphis, Sacramento and Portland have never hosted the game. Sacramento has a new arena (2016) and could bid for a future event. Detroit, which also has a new arena (2017) and hasn’t hosted the game since 1959, is also a potential bidder. Bids to host the game are done in two-year windows.
Milwaukee’s last brush with hosting an all-star game for a major sport ended in infamy. The 2002 MLB All-Star Game, held at the then-new American Family Field, ended in a tie with boos from those in attendance and the baseball league ultimately changing its rules to prevent a recurrence.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is a liar. It is that simple.
First, he made threats against the Bucks, then the tax money
flowed like a gusher into the hands of a billionaire and now
all we have are his empty promises.
I would like to trade Adam Silver to some overseas league. Milwaukee has every right to feel snubbed and slighted. Silver and ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith make good bedfellows in their clear disdain for MKE.