We’ve known this was coming for a while but now it is official:
New York City — jointly the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, and both the Knicks and Nets — will host the 2015 NBA All-Star Game, the league announced Wednesday at a press conference in New York.
Brooklyn’s new Barclay’s Center will host the Friday and Saturday night events — the Rising Stars game (rookies and second year players), the skills competition and the Dunk Contest, among other events.
Madison Square Garden will host the 64th All-Star Game itself on Sunday.
“For that weekend, New York will be the capital of the basketball world,” NBA Commissioner David Stern said.
“This will be a unique event in NBA history, to have two teams co-hosting and sharing an All-Star Weekend,” said NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver. “Although there are three days of events in the arenas we expect a week long celebration of basketball in the New York area involving all five boroughs.”
“To our friends in Brooklyn, like so many other times when New Yorkers put their differences aside for something bigger, we looking forward to giving our rivalry a rest — for a little bit — to ensure we deliver the very best All-Star experience the league has ever held,” said Knicks owner James Dolan at the press conference. Everyone laughed at that.
Both teams wanted to host the weekend and it took some negotiating and some arm twisting by the league and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to get to this compromise. Part of that is likely the All-Star Game returning to New York a handful of years after this with the roles reversed (Madison Square Garden hosting the preliminary events and the Barclay’s Center the main game).
“I don’t want to kill our leverage in negotiations, so I’m not going to say (that the game is certainly coming back to NYC), but given the cooperation and era of good will that this entire endeavor has delivered to us I don’t think it’s going to be a problem to have it here again and again and again if the league and the other owners want to do it,” Stern said.
While the situation is a little odd with co-hosting NBA is such a basketball Mecca that this event could be special. Even now players get up for games in New York — you ever watch Kobe Bryant at Madison Square Garden? — so the game has some real potential. And maybe even the dunk contest won’t suck.