CLEVELAND — The NBA’s All-Star weekend celebration gets underway in Cleveland on Friday night at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse with the Colorox Rising Stars.
It's an event that features primarily NBA players in their first or second years in the NBA, as well as four players from the NBA G League Ignite team.
The Cavaliers will be well represented all weekend long, and it starts as rookie big man Evan Mobley and second-year guard Isaac Okoro will be taking part.
The teams took to the floor at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse on Friday morning to practice before taking center stage Friday night. Photos of the practice can be found in the below.
In the past, the Rising Stars event has been done a couple of different ways. First, it was a game that pit the best rookies in the NBA against the best second-year players in the NBA and was called the Rookie-Sophomore Game. Then, the event still featured the best first and second-year players, but the teams were split up between players born in the United States and internationally born players.
This year, the event has changed formats again, as now there are four teams comprised of seven players. Each team has six NBA players and one player from the NBA G League Ignite team. The event will be a three game tournament featuring each team playing a semifinal game before the winners squaring off in the championship game.
Mobley and Okoro will be teammates in the game on the team coached by NBA legend Rick Barry. They’ll be joined by rookies Cade Cunningham, Alpreen Sengun, Franz Wagner, second-year Ohio State product Jae’Sean Tate,and G Leaguer Dyson Daniels.
The event starts at 9 p.m. and can be seen on TNT.