

Within the starting lineup there are three first-timers, one who’s barely old enough to legally drink alcohol ( Trae Young), one who’s not even 21 yet (Luke Doncic) and Pascal Siakam, who might have had the quickest rise from project to star in recent NBA memory. This year’s All-Star weekend will be no different - and we have a very interesting All-Star class to gaze upon this year. Actors ham it up and celebs practice their best reactions.

There are also the various competitions (Dunk, Skill and 3PT) where camera shots of the crowd are plentiful and a good opportunity to get some face time. Cole, Bad Bunny, Ice Cube and Common play. There’s the actual celebrity game, where rapper Quavo won MVP in 2018 and we have seen the likes of J. We see this play out a lot of times during the NBA’s All-Star weekend, the ultimate pairing of celebrity, music and sport. Whether it’s LeBron James in the back of his ride endlessly head-nodding to some new Future, Damian Lillard actually rapping himself and being quite good at it or the various social media interactions and name drops between player and artist, no other intersection of art and sport comes close to rivaling rap and ball. The overlap is not just abstract, you see it play out in everyday life. A game that was immortalized on the streets of inner cities worldwide with a music genre that was created in the streets of the South Bronx in the 1970s - the parallels between hoops and rhymes go hand in hand. Rap and hoops go together like Jerry Ferrara (Turtle) and fitted caps circa the “Entourage” era. It’s been uttered many times before: “Rappers wanna be ballers, ballers wanna be rappers.” Who do the ten NBA All-Star starters compare to in the rap game?
