The NBA will unveil an event concept called NBA Centre Court at next month’s All-Star Game in Toronto, another step in the evolution of the league’s fan festival held during its biggest week of the season.
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The NBA House locations proved popular when New York City hosted the All-Star Game and fan fest activities last year.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES (2)
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NBA Centre Court will focus on fan participation, putting 40 combinations of courts and baskets under one roof to hold clinics, skills competitions and other game-related activities designed to get kids to play basketball. It follows the league last year, when the All-Star Game was in New York, moving away from the All-Star Jam Session event it had held in host cities’ convention centers in years past. It instead built two smaller NBA House fan fest locations and hosted 100 youth basketball clinics
throughout New York’s five boroughs.
“We as a league have been focusing on putting basketballs in kids’ hands and we want to double down on getting the community excited about playing the game,” said Danny Meiseles, president and executive producer, content, for the NBA.
This year’s All-Star Game will be played Sunday, Feb. 14, at Air Canada Centre.
NBA Centre Court will be located at Toronto’s Enercare Centre, adjacent to Ricoh Coliseum about 15 minutes outside of downtown Toronto. Similar to past Jam Session events and last year’s NBA House, NBA Centre Court will include heavy activation among the league’s sponsors. The event will run Friday through Sunday, Feb. 12-14, and will cost $15 (Canadian) for kids and $30 (Canadian) for adults to attend. NBA legends, WNBA players and D-League players will run the clinics.
The event also will showcase dance teams and dunk squads from various NBA teams, and the league will have its NBA All-Star Shop at the Centre Court location as well. The league will hold its Jr. NBA Day, featuring its youth basketball participation program, on that Friday at Centre Court. About 2,500 Toronto-area youth are expected to participate.
“It’s an evolution of how we present our fan activation to our fans in local areas,” Meiseles said. “At Jam Session, there were basketball activities, but we are making it a larger focus. Playing the game is the best way to enjoy the game.”
In other All-Star business, the NBA is taking a new approach to its entertainment for this year’s events. For the first time, the league is bringing in from all 30 of its teams game-entertainment producers and directors as well as entertainment acts. The number of in-game personnel from the league’s teams assigned to All-Star week will reach about 120 compared with about 20 in past years.
Meiseles said the idea to bring in more staff from teams came out of the league’s game-presentation advisory committee, which was formed last year and is made up of 10 game-presentation directors from teams across the league.
“We have producers who do this 41 nights a year, and it felt like we should tap the incredible resources,” he said.
While the NBA has used in-game producers from various NBA teams for past All-Star games, this will be the first time the game-production committee instead of the NBA’s entertainment group selected which acts and personnel will be showcased.
The Minnesota Timberwolves’ director of live programming and entertainment, Chad Folkestad, will be one of two directors for this year’s All-Star Saturday Night, while the team’s director of music, Tim Miller, will direct the Saturday Night music, specifically. The Wolves’ DJ/in-game host and their mascot, Crunch, will also work the Saturday event.
“We are thrilled that our team of people have been entrusted with part of All-Star Weekend,” said Timberwolves President Chris Wright.
