![]() The event will highlight eight Black entrepreneurs in tech, including four from Salt Lake City. Even Thursday’s pitch competition, hosted by the NBA Foundation, comes with a local flair. Utah is paying that forward with gestures like free public transportation this entire week. Much of this year’s All-Star agenda focuses on intertwining with the state itself while giving back to it - like the $3 million the NBA and National Basketball Players Association are contributing to the Utah and historically Black colleges and universities communities. “That’s going to be an element that I think people will really see.” “It’s really important when you have an All-Star Game to have someone like him out in front, really promoting his city, his state,” Dumars said. ![]() “I think we’re now trying to bring all that together around the Jazz, which is something the whole state can agree on.”Īnother compelling factor Utah has working in its favor is Smith himself. “We’re a different city than we were 10, 15 years ago,” said Smith, who also cited the tech boom associated with Silicon Slopes and the region’s blossoming universities. In recent years, the city’s skyline has grown by more than a half-dozen new downtown high-rises, and its international airport underwent a multibillion-dollar overhaul. Salt Lake City is a fixture in the top 10 on lists of the fastest growing cities in the country. “As much as we would love to be in every NBA market and go to 28 different cities, not every city in which we have a team has the infrastructure to be able to support an event of this scope and scale,” Flatow said. victory creative groupĪmong the biggest factors in the NBA deciding to bring the All-Star Game back to Salt Lake City was the region’s improving infrastructure. The NBA is bringing back the popular Jam Session, which made its debut in Utah three decades ago. Flatow said All-Star voting is “probably the single biggest piece of our global engagement from a fan perspective.”Īll told, about 120,000 people are expected to attend this year’s All-Star festivities, which would be in line with the 121,000 that visited Cleveland for last year’s All-Star Game. As for the All-Star Game itself, this year’s top vote-getter, LeBron James, tallied over 7.4 million fan votes via the NBA app and NBA.com, seven times as many as Michael Jordan received as the top vote-getter in 1993, when fans voted for starters at arenas through computerized scratch-off ballots and by mail. The NBA also has doubled the number of media credentials it has handed out for All-Star, from 900 in 1993 to more than 1,800 for this year’s event. This year, the league has set its new high by contracting nearly 7,000 rooms at more than 30 hotels, accounting for 33,000 total room nights. For the 1993 All-Star Game, which saw Hall of Famers and Jazz legends John Stockton and Karl Malone earn co-MVP honors, the NBA and its guests occupied 3,300 hotel rooms in 11 Salt Lake City hotels. Hotel occupancy provides a glimpse into the event’s magnitude. “But now it’s four days of All-Star activities and it’s become one of the biggest sporting events in the world.” ![]() It was a great weekend,” said Joe Dumars, NBA executive vice president and head of basketball operations who played in the 1993 game as a member of the Pistons. All-Star “weekend” no longer does it justice - in fact, “weekend” was dropped from the official event logo in 2000, and the NBA’s head of global events, Kelly Flatow, has worked to scrap the phrasing from her staff’s vernacular because “it’s so much more than that.” This year’s iteration will scale bigger than its predecessors in several key areas. The NBA’s tentpole event will flaunt that maturation later this week when the product returns to Utah for the first time in 30 years. The 45-year-old has come a long way since he attended part of 1993’s All-Star weekend as a member of the Jazz’s youth basketball program. “It’s been pretty cool to reflect back on,” said Smith, now owner of the Utah Jazz. Thirty years later, Smith is fuzzy on some of the details of his experience hooping at one of the league’s All-Star fan events that year but is crystal clear on the associated emotions: the anticipation, the excitement, the joy of being a young teenager attending one of the country’s biggest sporting events in his hometown. Ryan Smith still has a souvenir Coke bottle from the 1993 NBA All-Star Game, its sentimental value continuing to rise as the distant memories grow blurrier. Co-MVP Karl Malone drives to the basket during the 1993 NBA All-Star Game in Salt Lake City. ![]()
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