CLEVELAND, Ohio — The All-Star Game was competitive. Actually competitive.
Not the polite, take-turns trading 30-footers kind of competitive. Not the wink-and-nod, nobody-wants-to-get-hurt kind either. This was chest-to-chest. Pride-on-the-line. Guys sliding their feet and running actual sets in an attempt to win, for the first time in years.
By the time the final tipped between Team Stripes and Team Stars, the tone had already been set. They’d seen stars try to outthink — not just outshoot — one another.
And then Team Stars took over.
After dropping a two-point thriller earlier in the night against Team Stripes, Team Stars came back in the championship round with extra energy, rolling to a 47-21 victory. The revenge was swift.
Still, for Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell, the night was a mixture of cheering on opponents and finding his spots when given the opportunity. The seven-time All-Star came off the bench, but he looked engaged from the moment he entered.
Mitchell finished the final with six points, drilling two of his four attempts from deep.
In their first game of the round-robin, Team Stripes edged Team Stars 42-40 in what immediately felt different from recent All-Star editions.
Mitchell’s seven-minute burst led to six points and three assists, including one that led to the winning shot by De’Aaron Fox. Mitchell cut into open space, LeBron James found Mitchell and then Mitchell shot a laser to Fox who knocked down the decisive triple.
It was controlled chaos — the kind Mitchell thrives in.
Then came the heater.
If the night needed a signature stretch, Kawhi Leonard supplied it.
In the second matchup against Team World, Leonard detonated for 31 of Team Stripes’ 48 points. Designed touches. Elbow isolations. Uncommon yet much needed in the All-Star Game. It was grown-man basketball in a setting that used to reward only the spectacular.
By the time Team Stripes advanced to face Team Stars in the final, the energy inside the arena had grown. Team World had played with international swagger, carrying the pride of multiple countries stitched into one roster. Both Team USA squads carried their own chip — a quiet battle for domestic bragging rights before anyone even thought about global dominance.
That pride was visible in the defensive stances. In the way possessions slowed down in key moments instead of speeding up for a heat check.
Yes, the final score tilted heavily toward Team Stars. Yes, Team Stripes ran out of answers.
But the larger story was the buy-in.
The league has searched for a formula to restore the All-Star Game’s pulse. Sunday’s four-team round robin tapped into something simple and powerful: identity.
Once that competitive edge surfaced, nobody wanted to be the group that blinked first.
Mitchell embodied that shift. He wasn’t chasing viral moments. He was chasing advantages. Reading coverages. Moving without the ball. Competing.
The final horn may have sounded on a 47-21 loss, but the bigger takeaway was that the All-Star Game finally sounded alive again.
For the first time in years, it didn’t feel like a layup line. It felt like basketball.