Los Angeles: The stars will be out in Los Angeles, on the basketball court and all around it.
The NBA’s All-Star festivities are back at Staples Center, with the usual events on All-Star Saturday night and a new format for the game Sunday.
Captains LeBron James and Stephen Curry drafted players from the pool of All-Stars and the winning team gets a $350,000 donation from the NBA to the charity it chose. The league is hoping the new format that replaced the traditional East-West matchup will make it more competitive after a couple of lacklustre games the previous two years.
Perhaps the players can heed the words of Kobe Bryant, who won the MVP award on his home floor when the All-Star Game was last in Los Angeles in 2011.
“I feel like we have a sense of responsibility and we are voted in for what we do during the season, which is play hard,” Bryant said following that game. “And we come here, that’s what the fans want to see. They want to see us go at it and see us compete and that’s what I try to do and that’s what I try to tell my teammates to do.”
Bryant is gone now but Beyonce and Jay-Z, Jack Nicholson and Justin Bieber are among the celebrities who attended that game and are scheduled to be back for at least some of this weekend.
