NBA All Star Weekend 2021: a non-traditional edition

The State Farm Arena, home of the Atlanta Hawks, is ready for the 2021 version of the NBA All Star Weekend this coming Sunday, March 7 and it'll, as expected, have several changes compared to what we have known for years due to the peculiarity of living in a pandemic.

In fact, since the commissioner of the best basketball in the world, Adam Silver, made it official on February 18, questions began in the environment about how this edition could be, which is chaired by intense negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA ).

Of course, this year, the All Star Game or All Star Weekend will break with the tradition. The first thing is that the Rising Stars Challenge or Rookie Game will not be held, and, the other important news is that all the scheduled activities will be held only that same day , something that had never happened before. We could say that it will be an All Star Day.

What fans will enjoy is the dunk, triples and skills contest . Not a minor detail is that, initially, this edition was scheduled for the Bunkers Life Fieldhouse, but the pandemic forced it to modify the arena will held the event just in 2024 . This is why Atlanta was selected by the request that was made to the commissioner to raise funds for the African American community HBCUs in that city.

And the teams?

Since the 2018 edition, a new format was established that demolished the traditional match between the Western Conference Team against the Eastern Conference Team. Now, it is the team of the first most voted player against that of the second most voted .

What is maintained is the way in which the coaches of each team are chosen, with priority being the DTs who have their leading teams in each conference. This year, the honor goes to Quin Snyder of the Utah Jazz (West) and Doc Rivers of the Philadelphia Sixers (East) .

In the previous edition, there was the duel between Lebron James' Team versus Giannis Antetokounmpo , won by the first 157-155. This time, James will lead one team again and the other will be designed by Kevin Durant , although he will not participate due to a strained left hamstring.

The other major absentee will be Anthony Davis of LA Lakers , as he suffers a calf strain with worsening Achilles tendonitis in his right leg.

The draft

Now that we know Durant is drafting the All-Star Game, all we have to see is who he and LeBron James are goint to select.

This year, Kevin Durant will choose first, as he will be out due to injury. Jayson Tatum, the star forward for the Boston Celtics , will be added to the All-Star starting group to make up for Durant's absence.

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There can be many combinations, and build crazy teams with the ten most voted, five for each conference. The Fadeaway World publication carried out an exercise according to the order of each pick, so we would have, for example, a starting five with LeBron, Kawhi Leonard, Luka Doncic, Jayson Tatum and Joel Embiid .

And in the reserve of this set could be, for example: Chris Paul, Damian Lillard, Devin Booker, Paul George, the Australian Ben Simmons, Jaylen Brown, and the French Rudy Gobert , what an epic team!

On the Durant side, for example, we could have names like Kyrie Irving, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Stephen Curry, Bradley Beal and Nikola Jokic , while on the bench would be James Harden, Zion Williamson, Donovan Mitchell, Zach LaVine, Julius Randle, Nikola Vucevic and Domanatas Sabonis Great team!.

Schedule

With the new single day and all the sporting events to be held, the All Star Weekend 2021 program will be carried out as follows: skills contest and triples, an hour and a half before the main event. In the halftime of the All-Star Game, it will be the always attractive dunk contest.

In the Western conference, LeBron was the most voted, in fact, he was the most acclaimed of the entire league by the people, with 5'922.554 votes while for the East, the most voted by the public, with 5'567.106, was Durant, who, although it may seem incredible, is the first to be distinguished with this honor.