On a frigid winter night in the middle of February, the best of the best headed to the “Windy City” to perform under the bright lights of the United Center.

Chicago, Illinois would be the NBA All-Star Weekend’s host city in 2020 for the first time since 1988!

Valentine’s Day Hoops and Friday Night Fun:

The Friday evening of Valentine’s Day, this year in particular, kicked off the annual festivities of NBA All-Star Weekend. Many casual basketball fans sometimes think that the NBA All-Star game is just a one day affair. However, this is a common misconception; All-Star weekend is actually an entire weekend filled with star-studded activities and competitions.

As just stated, the weekend’s festivities commence each year on a Friday evening. Ever since its introduction back in 2003, All-Star weekend has begun with the annual “Celebrity All-Star Game.” This exhibition contest typically features several present-day musical artists and rappers, WNBA (women’s pro-basketball) players, actors, and comedians.

In past years, the Celebrity Game has had some extremely big-name celebrities participate, such as Snoop Dog, Kevin Hart, and even the iconic Justin Bieber. However, this year’s game was nowhere nearly as stacked with quite as many widely well-known famous people to the same caliber as “Justin-Bieber-famous”.

The coaches of the game this year were two very prominent basketball analysts and TV commentators, Stephen A. Smith and Michael Wilbon. Therefore, the team names were simply “Team Stephen A.” and “Team Wilbon” respectively. I know, not very creative, right? 

Nonetheless, “Team Wilbon” ended up taking home the win by defeating “Team Stephen A.” by a very low score of just 62-47. 

Remember now, this is the celebrity game. They’re actors, rappers, and TV personalities— not basketball players!

The second and final exhibition game played on Friday night is also an annual competition known as the “Rising Stars Challenge”. This contest features the top 1st year (rookie) and 2nd year (sophomore) NBA players across the league. Essentially, it is also known as the All-Star game for the younger players who are not yet quite All-Star caliber, yet will potentially be there soon.

In past years, the game’s format had been set up as “rookies vs. sophomores”, and other variations of that. However, in 2015, the format was switched up to “Team World vs. Team USA”, and has been as such ever since.

The game features a relatively exclusive selection of players, as each team only has 10 players on its roster as opposed to the typical 15 of a regular NBA team roster.

10 foreign-born players square off against 10 American-born players to showcase their skills just as the real All-Stars do two nights later.

This year, the game’s participants featured a rather awesome head-to-head matchup, as two second-year phenoms faced off against each other. 20-year-old superstar Luka Doncic, born in Slovenia, would represent “Team World”, while 21-year-old sharpshooter Trae Young, born in Texas, would play for “Team USA.” 

While these two bright young talents are only 2nd year players, they both were also voted as regular All-Stars to participate in the Sunday night game as well. This is obviously very uncommon for 2nd year players to be named as actual All-Stars in general.

This game also featured a top-3 rookie of 2020, point guard Ja Morant, who represented “Team USA”.

In the end, “Team USA” trumped right over “Team World” by a solid margin, 151-131, with a dominating 2nd half performance. New York Knicks’ rookie R.J. Barrett led all players in scoring with 27 points; however, he was on the losing team. The MVP award only goes to players on the winning side.

The MVP trophy went to Charlotte Hornets’ sophomore Miles Bridges who played exceptionally for the victorious “Team USA”, recording 20 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists.

On Saturday night, the action was packed! 

The evening starts off with the annual “Skills Challenge” presented by Taco Bell.

8 players, (typically 4 shorter and 4 taller), compete in a race around an obstacle course while dribbling, passing, and shooting a basketball. The player who successfully completes through the obstacle course first wins that round, and therefore moves onto the next round. To win the competition, a player must win 3 total matchups, and not lose any.

This year, Miami Heat big man Bam Adebayo defeated Indiana Pacers’ forward Domantas Sabonis in the final round to be crowned the 2020 “Skills Challenge” champion.

Next up on All-Star Saturday Night was the “Mountain Dew 3-Point Contest”. This one is very simple; The player who makes the most 3-point shots and scores the most points wins the competition. 

For the past 34 years since the contest’s introduction, players would have exactly 1 minute (60 secs) to attempt a total of 25 shots from different spots behind the 3 point line.

However, this year for the first time ever, the participants had an additional 10 seconds to shoot the shots from the wide range of locations around the perimeter of the 3-point arc. 

This was because of the brand new “Mountain Dew” Money-Ball shots, which were an additional two shots about five feet further beyond the arc than all the other shots. Regular money-balls are worth 2 points, but these Mountain Dew ones were worth 3. These shots were very far and deep shots, and only a few of the participants were able to make them.

Ultimately, 5 players were eliminated after the first round, and only the 3 players with the highest score moved on to the second and final round. 

In this final round, Sacramento Kings’ shooting guard Buddy Hield ended up putting on the most impressive performance, burying 19 of the 27 total shots to defeat Devin Booker and win the trophy.

Last.. but very certainly not least of Saturday night.. was the “AT&T Slam Dunk Contest”. Again, a fairly simple competition. 4 players, who are specifically known to be exceptionally great dunkers, compete to throw down the most absurd and impressive dunks they can come up with. This is, of course, meant to electrify the crowd and allow the players to showcase their skills under the bright lights of All-Star Weekend.

Dwight Howard of the Lakers and Pat Connaughton of the Bucks were eliminated after Round 1, which left us with a phenomenal final round matchup of Miami’s Derrick Jones Jr. versus Orlando’s Aaron Gordon.

Incredible, unbelievably difficult dunks were pulled off by both Jones Jr. and Gordon, but in the end, Jones Jr. was awarded the trophy— which stirred up a huge amount of controversy amongst players, analysts, and fans alike. Social media was buzzing with tweets and posts for several hours following the contest. Many felt that Gordon put on a more spectacular performance and absolutely should have won over Jones Jr. Nevertheless, despite these differing opinions, Derrick Jones Jr. ended up taking home the win.

Now, onto the “real main event” of the weekend.

Sunday Night Brings Bright Lights:

Sunday night arrived, and the 24 players selected to play in the 69th NBA All-Star Game arrived at the United Center. For the third consecutive year, the two teams were led by a respective captain on each side; the overall leading vote-getters from each conference were named as the captains of this game. 

This year, for the second year in a row, the teams were led by LeBron James of the West and Giannis Antetokounmpo of the East.

Before the game tipped off, a commemoration ceremony was made on live TV to NBA legend and former 18-time All Star, Kobe Bryant, as a tribute to his recent tragic death just a few weeks before.

Then, finally, the game began and the points started to pile up in bunches. Just the usual All-Star game type of stuff: “Alley-oops”, deep 3-pointers, and of course a countless number of slam dunks.

At the end of the first half, “Team Giannis” led “Team LeBron” by a score 92-83 after Giannis and company dominated the 2nd quarter.

The 3rd quarter was neck-and-neck, quite literally: A tie. Both teams posted 41 points in the period.

As far as the final box score stats once the game concluded, 76ers’ center Joel Embiid contributed a solid 22 points and 10 rebounds for “Team Giannis”. 

“Team Giannis” also got a great performance from Utah’s Rudy Gobert, who tallied 21 points and 11 rebounds off the bench.

For “Team LeBron”, Thunder point guard Chris Paul made it rain from downtown, as he nailed 7 three pointers off the bench. 

“Team LeBron” also attempted a ridiculous SEVENTY, (70), three pointers in the game, and made 24 of them.

In the end, “Team LeBron” came out on top, but by a very slim margin of just two points.. A final score of 157-155.

The game ended on a made free-throw by Lakers’ forward Anthony Davis….

Extremely anticlimactic to say the least!

For the first year ever, the All-Star Game MVP trophy was now officially named the “Kobe Bryant Most Valuable Player Award”, in honor of the late, great Kobe himself.

The trophy was awarded to Kawhi Leonard of “Team LeBron” for his outstanding 30 point, 7 rebound, 4 assist, and 2 steal performance.