Why You (Yes, You!) Should Watch the NBA Rising Stars Challenge

The purpose of the draft lottery is to help struggling teams get better players. This has the side effect of ensuring that you NEVER get to see the good young players on national TV, because they are on awful teams (don’t pretend you’d recognize Brandon Knight if you saw him walking around town). That said, the Rising Stars game gives a regular, non-League Pass NBA fan like myself something they don’t get to see: the good young guys. Sure, you’ve probably seen plenty of Kahwi Leonard and the Manimal, but there are a ton of talented young players that you basically heard about until they got drafted and never saw again. In this one meaningless circus of a game, you get to see all of them.

I had never seen Kyrie Irving play until last year’s Rising Stars game. He only played a handful of college games and, frankly, I don’t watch much college basketball anyway. I really had no idea what we were getting with this guy (the Uncle Drew video hadn’t happened yet). Kyrie went 8-8 from three in last year’s game and pretty much dominated everything, plus we got to see his fantastic handle.

I was sold. I immediately started watching every possible Cavs game I could get access to (mostly when they happened to be on at bars). I went to the first Cavs-Nets game at Barclays this season just to see that handle, and Kyrie didn’t disappoint. My girlfriend got me an Irving t-shirt for Christmas (thanks!) and I can’t wait to see him in the main event next weekend. The guy is already my favorite non-Celtic. All thanks to this silly exhibition.

Don’t get me wrong here, this thing is barely a game. It’s pretty much all behind-the-back, alley-oop windmill dunks, spin moves and centers shooting threes. There are almost no passes between two guys who are both standing on the ground and defense is limited to Greg Monroe messing with John Wall’s off-the-bounce self-oop. The game is played in 20-minute halves and guys get added last minute based on things like Linsanity and having a cool flat-top. Last year, the teams combined for 279 points. In short, it was awesome.

Wherever you are next Friday night, take this opportunity to check out guys who used to just be names to you. You probably won’t get many more chances to see Andre Drummond, Damian Lillard, Alexey Shved and too many Bobcats, Pistons and non-Irving Cavs play again. Oh, and Kyrie will be there too.

Also, THIS STUFF: