Whether the draft was scripted or not, this year’s NBA All-Star Game is going to be an interesting one. 

The league will be trying out yet another new format where this year’s All-Stars will be split into three teams of eight and will be joined by a fourth team, the winner of the Rising Stars game. These four teams will play in a mini tournament featuring a knockout semifinal round and a winner-take-all final. Another intriguing facet is that the game clock will be done away with and the winner will be determined through a playground-style race to 40 points.

TNT’s popular NBA analysts Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley, and Kenny Smith are the general managers for each team and they drafted their respective rosters with matching themes. O’Neal selected all of the elder statesmen–plus the Boston Celtics’ star duo Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown–for his roster, led by none other than 40-year-old LeBron James whom he selected first overall during the draft. 

James, Tatum, and Brown will be joined on Team Shaq by veterans Stephen Curry, Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, Damian Lillard, and James Harden who will all have at least nine NBA All-Star game appearances each after this year’s festivities. This group notably features five 2024 Olympic gold medalists from Team USA in James, Tatum, Curry, Davis, and Durant.

Smith, on the other hand, went with an “All Gen-Z” team headlined by another 2024 Olympian, 23-year-old Anthony Edwards. The two-time NBA All-Star has been touted as the next face of the league and he will be joined by a young group where 28-year-old Jalen Brunson, also a two-time NBA All-Star, is the only player above the age of 25. 

Team Kenny is completed by another pair of second time NBA All-Stars, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Darius Garland, and a quartet of first-time NBA All-Stars: Jalen Williams, Evan Mobley, Cade Cunningham, and Tyler Herro. Smith’s team might lack the star power of O’Neal’s, but he reasoned during the draft that these players are eager to prove themselves on a big stage such as this and it is hard to argue with his reasoning.

The third and final team of All-Stars is Charles Barkley’s team of international superstars–and Donovan Mitchell. Barkley announced prior to the draft that he was going to pick a team of “Paella, an international dish” and went on to select each and every international superstar. He drafted, in this order, Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama, Pascal Siakam, Alperen Sengun, Karl-Anthony Towns, and, last but not the least, America’s very own Donovan Mitchell. 

There were seven international players in the draft pool, four of whom (Jokic, Antetokounmpo, Gilgeous-Alexander, and Wembanyama) are leading candidates for this season’s major individual awards, yet somehow Barkley managed to bring them all together. This team obviously does not make sense on paper–Gilgeous-Alexander and Mitchell are literally their only perimeter players–though the all-around talents of these players should make for a fascinating on court experiment. 

The teams of O’Neal and Barkley should be favored to face off in the finals given the overall talent on each side. However, the unpredictability and electricity of the NBA All-Star game environment will make things interesting and it would not come as a surprise if there is an upset or two before the night is over as all of these players are stars in their own right.