Every year each NBA team gets a week of no competition and enjoys the all star weekend. On Friday, there was a celebrity game held in the Staples Center, where the Clippers and Lakers faced off. The Clippers were coached by Katie Nolan, an ESPN analysts, Common, a singer, and Paul Pierce. Team Lakers were coached by Rachel Nichols, and actor, Tracy Mcgrady, and Michael B. Jordan, an actor. Some of the players on team Clippers were Miles Brown an actor from the TV show Blackish, Brandon Armstrong an NBA impersonator, Jamie Foxx, Quavo a rapper, and many others. Team Lakers had Caleb Mclaughlin an actor most known for starting as Lucas Sinclair on Stranger Things, Justin Bieber, and many others. This game went back and forth but team Clippers won 75-66 and Quavo was the MVP.

On the same day the World vs U.S game was on. Some players on the world team were Joel Embiid of the 76ers, Jamal Murray of the Nuggets, Ben Simmons of the 76ers and many more. The U.S team had Kyle Kuzma and Brandon Ingram of the Lakers, Jaylen Brown of the Celtics, Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz and many more. Despite Jaylen Brown scoring 35 points the World team won 155-124 as Bogdan Bogdanovic won MVP for the World team. On Saturday the NBA had a skills challenge, a dunk contest, and the 3 point challenge.

The NBA skills challenge has been won by the bigs twice in a row but this year Spencer Dinwiddie of the Nets deeated Lauri Markkanen of the Bulls in the final round. The participants of the Dunk Contest were Victor Oladipo of the Pacers, DOnovan Mitchell of the Jazz, Larry Nance Jr of the Cavaliers, and Dennis Smith Jr. of the Mavericks. In the first round Victor Oladipo could not complete his first dunk in three attempts but the judges gave him 31 points for trying. In his second dunk Victor Oladipo messed up in his first attempt, then he walked over to the Black Panther cast and borrowed the Black Panther mask from Chadwick Boseman. On this dunk the judges gave him 40 points which resulted in 71 which was not enough to keep him in the contest. Dennis Smith Jr. was one of two rookies to participate in this contest. his first dunk he failed his first attempt, after he tried a simple double-pump reverse. Smith’s second dunk was perhaps the best of the night, as he went between his legs to his left hand going away from the basket. Even though Smith needed two tries for this dunk the judges gave him 50 points for effort. However his first score of 39 prevented him from advancing to the final. Larry Nance Jr. impressed many when he changed into his dad’s uniform in honor of him winning the first ever NBA dunk contest and performed the same dunk.Nance copied his dad’s hand cradle dunk but only received 44 points. To reach the final, Nance scored a near-perfect 49 on his second dunk. He started out of bounds and did an exaggerated one-hand windmill with a powerful finish. In the final round, Nance’s dad came on the court to lob him the ball for a  windmill that the judges gave 46 points  on his second attempt. On Nance’s last dunk, he lobbed the ball to himself then tipped the ball off the glass a second time and received a perfect 50 points. However Nance Jr. did not win in the finals, despite his effort. Donovan Mitchell the standout rookie won the contest. This year in the 3 point contest defending champion Eric Gordon lost in the second round as well as Tobias Harris. In the final round Klay thompson faced Devin Booker, in a shootout where Booker broke the record of most points in the 3 point contest with 28.

The most exciting event happened on Sunday, the 67th annual all star game. This year the team formats were different. Usually the All-Stars were the the best players in the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference. In this year’s offseason there were many trades and free agent signing that made the Western Conference such as the Minnesota Timberwolves acquiring Jimmy Butler, the Thunder received Carmelo Anthony and Paul George in trades which created this controversy of the Western Conference being much better than the Eastern Conference. Because of this, the NBA has decided to create the teams by making two team captain which are forward Lebron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and guard Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors. These two captains are able to choose players from either conference. The starters for team Stephen were Demar Derozan of the Toronto Raptors, James Harden of the Houston Rockets, Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, and Joel Embiid of the 76ers. .  For team Lebron the starters were Kevin Durant  of the Golden State Warriors, Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans, Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder, and Kyrie Irving of the Boston Celtics. During the game team Stephen was leading for most of the game all the way into the 4th quarter. During the 4th quarter the starters for team Lebron came back into the game with 6 minutes left with a lot of energy but they were down by 13. During those 6 minutes team Lebron forced turnovers and scored more than team Stephen and won the game 148-145, this resulted in team captain, Lebron James winning MVP of the game. This year’s all star weekend was fun and exciting and there is much more to come in the second half of the season.

If you would like to see highlights of these events click on the links below!

Celebrity Game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y2-Aj53sxw

Rising Stars Challenge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsY6f4Xj3m8

Skills Challenge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph7dOCXogFM

Dunk Contest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EVO2ohrQtw

3 Point Contest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB-CcnirY5Q

All Star Game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfWC4iDzpdI