Many view basketball as the second most popular ball game in the world after football, and basketball fans do not disagree about the special status enjoyed by the NBA, which is the main destination for the best basketball players in the world.

And if this league is the crown of the exciting game, then the jewel of the crown is the All Stars match that takes place in February of each year, in which the best stars of the National Basketball Association, known as the “NBA”, compete through a team representing clubs. The eastern section of the championship against a team representing the western section.

Tonight, basketball fans are looking forward to Salt Lake City, Utah, which is hosting the 72nd edition of the tournament, which in fact represents a 3-day sports festival, noting that the first edition of this exhibition festival took place in Boston in 1951.

Before the match, which takes place on Sunday evening, American time, the audience will enjoy on Friday and Saturday a series of competitions and challenges in the individual skills of the game, such as smashing throws (dunks) and three-pointers.

The individual competitions this year witnessed a clear brilliance of Mac McClung, who won the crushing throw competition, while Damian Lillard, the Portland Trail Blazers star, won the three-point competition.

Interestingly, the 24-year-old McClung only participated in two NBA games, one with the Los Angeles Lakers and the other with the Chicago Bulls, both last season, but he finally signed a contract to move to the Philadelphia Seventy Sixers.

But how are the participants in the exhibition All-Star Game selected?

The main five are chosen through several stages that depend on the vote of each of the fans, players and specialized journalists, then the coach of each section chooses 7 of the reserve players to complete the team’s number of 12 players, noting that the coach cannot choose a player from the club he coaches.

Since 2018, an amendment has been made to the all-star match system that gives the right to the captain of each team, who has the highest votes, to choose from the group of players who win the vote to make the final list for the team.

The public vote represents 50% of the selection process, which gives it the greatest victory compared to the other two elements, which are the players and the media, each of which has a percentage of 25%.

As for the selection of the head coach, it is based on the coach’s record in the season, so that the East team leads the coach with the best record during the season’s competitions in this section, and the same applies to the Western section.

From the history of all stars

The interesting thing is that the beginning of thinking about holding an all-star match was with the aim of attracting more fans, similar to the popular baseball league in the United States, and the first match was held in Boston on March 2, 1951, and ended with the victory of the eastern section team over the western, with a score of 111-94, in the presence of More than 10,000 spectators, which was much more than the average attendance that season, when it reached 3,500 spectators.

Throughout the history of this match, the Eastern Division has achieved 37 victories, compared to 29 victories for the Western Division.

And when its system changed, starting in 2018, LeBron James won the match in 5 consecutive years, beating Stephen Curry in 2018, Yannis in 2019 and 2020, and Kevin Durant in 2021 and 2022.

Yannis Antetokounmpo (right) and LeBron James lead the two teams in the All-Star Game this year (agencies)

Lebron vs. Yannis

As for this year’s match, it brings together a team led by LeBron James (38 years), who topped the voting in the western section of the tournament, and another led by Yannis Antetokounmpo, the leader of the eastern section voting, so what qualified them for this position?

As for LeBron James, the star of the Los Angeles Lakers, he entered basketball history a few days ago when he became the historical top scorer in the NBA, after he surpassed, on the eighth of February, the record that was registered in the name of the star Karim Abdul-Jabbar, amounting to 38 thousand and 387 points, and the exciting He recorded it in April of 1984 when James was only 8 months old.

This is James' 19th participation in the All-Star match, in which he has participated continuously since 2005, and it will be a record, given that Karim Abdul-Jabbar had been selected for this match 19 times, but he had only actually participated in 18 games.

In addition, James led his team to win the All-Star Game in the last five editions, the last of which was at the expense of Kevin Durant's team, with a score of 163-160 last year, and he aspires to crown a sixth in a row.

On the other hand, the Greek Yannis, the 28-day-old Milwaukee Bucks star, who was born in Greece to immigrant parents from Nigeria, will captain one of the two teams competing in the All-Star game for the third time after 2019 and 2020.

And last January, Yannis succeeded in setting a personal record when he scored 55 points against the Washington Wizards basket to lead his Milwaukee team to a 123-113 victory, and to maintain second place in the Eastern Conference standings behind the leaders Boston Celtics.

And in that match, Yannis achieved another achievement, as he became only the fourth in the history of the tournament to score 40 points;

10 rebounds and at least 5 assists in 3 consecutive matches, to join a list that includes Russell Westbrook, Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain.

Absent stars

Interestingly, the hours prior to the meeting saw doubts about their participation, as James missed his team's last match, and Antetokounmpo was injured in his team's match against the Chicago Bulls on Thursday evening.

The match will also miss 3 of the most prominent stars who were chosen in the votes of fans, journalists and players, due to injury, most notably Stephen Curry, the Golden State Warriors star, who won the MVP award in last year’s match after scoring 50 points on his own.

Also absent is Kevin Durant, who recently moved from the Brooklyn Nets to the Phoenix Suns, as well as Zion Williamson, the star of New Orleans Pelicans, with the possibility of the absence of Cameroonian Joel Embiid, star of the Philadelphia Seventy Sixers.