The NBA -- a league not used to losing PR wars to other leagues -- lost one in February.

That month, the league offered a gimmicky All-Star spectacle in San Francisco that won considerable criticism. Meanwhile, pundits tripped over themselves to praise the NHL for successfully staging a widely discussed midseason international tournament, the 4-Nations Face-off.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver appears to have heard the criticism, and deemed the format change "a miss" Thursday.

"We're not there, in terms of creating an All-Star experience we can be proud of and our players can be proud of," Silver said in New York as the league's Board of Governors convened.

The 2025 event was a single-elimination four-team tournament, with teams captained by four TNT pundits. Next year, NBC will have the rights to the game -- which Silver hopes will help infuse fresh ideas into the event.

"The breaks were too long -- and I get it. It was opportunity to celebrate TNT," Silver said. "The long stoppage in play in that final game didn't work for anyone. So we're a bit back to the drawing board."