BY: Milton Westry
The NBA recently held its annual All-Star Game featuring the top players this season. This year’s All-Star Weekend was hosted in Cleveland, Ohio. The other events that took place during All-Star Weekend were the NBA celebrity game, the Rising Stars Challenge and All-Star Saturday Night. The celebrity game is a basketball event featuring different celebrities that have some skill in basketball. The Rising Stars Challenge is where the top rookies and second-year players face off. NBA All-Star Saturday night is an event featuring three contests: the skills challenge, the three-point contest and the slam dunk contest. That event also had performances by DJ Khaled, Mary J. Blige, Ludacris, Lil Wayne, Gunna, Migos and Lil Baby.
The All-Star Game took place on Sunday where Team Lebron faced Team Durant. What made this event extra special was the honoring of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team during the halftime show of the All-Star Game. This ceremony honored all of the 75 greatest NBA players of all time, with most of the players being in the Hall of Fame and some players being future Hall of Famers. Team Lebron picked up the win over Team Durant, with Steph Curry being named the All-Star MVP of the game. The final score was 163-160. Lebron James hit the game-winning shot.
The way the NBA chose to do the All-Star Game this year was in the new format that was introduced in 2020. This format ensures that the games are slightly competitive for NBA fans to enjoy. Each team plays three standard quarters for 12 minutes. After each quarter, the score starts back at 0-0. The team that has the highest score in each quarter wins the quarter. The winning team of each quarter gets $100,000 donated to the respective charity it was playing for. Team Lebron was playing for the Kent State I Promise Scholars and Team Durant was playing for the Greater Cleveland Food Bank.
Team Lebron won the first quarter, and Team Durant won the second quarter. Both teams were tied at the end of the third quarter, which meant that the money was split between both charities. The score of all three quarters was added up and the team with the most points at the end of three quarters determined the target score for the fourth quarter. 24 points were added to the winning team of all three quarters to get the target score. The number 24 was chosen in honor of Kobe Bryant. Since Team Durant had the most points after three quarters, which was 139, 24 points were added to give the target score of 163. Team Lebron reached 163 first, winning the game.