In a new effort to showcase the best first and second-year players in the NBA, the BBVA Compass Rising Stars Challenge has a new twist this year. The players from the United States will be facing off against the players from the rest of the world. While we're missing quite a few of the top rookies due to injuries this season, we're still going to have two really fun rosters running and gunning Friday night.
Team USA is comprised of Utah Jazz point guard Trey Burke, Philadelphia 76ers' Robert Covington (replacing Michael Carter-Williams) and Nerlens Noel, the Orlando Magic backcourt of Victor Oladipo and Elfrid Payton, Minnesota Timberwolves' Zach LaVine and Shabazz Muhammad, Detroit Pistons' guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Charlotte Hornets' big man Cody Zeller, and Brooklyn Nets' center Mason Plumlee. They'll be coached by Alvin Gentry.
The World Team has Rudy Gobert and Dante Exum of the Jazz, Andrew Wiggins and Gorgui Dieng of the Wolves, Nets' rookie Bojan Bogdanovic, Chicago Bulls' rookie Nikola Mirotic, Kostas Papanikolaou of the Houston Rockets, Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, Matthew Dellavedova of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Dennis Schroeder of the Atlanta Hawks. Kenny Atkinson is the World Team's coach.
Steven Adams of the Thunder, Jusuf Nurkic of the Nuggets, and Kelly Olynyk of the Celtics were all selected for the World Team but are out with injuries.
When: Friday, Feb. 13 | 9 p.m. ET
Where: Barclays Center
TV: TNT
Here are five things to watch for in this game:
1) Will the guards go at each other like we've seen in the past?
We've seen some epic battles in the past with Gilbert Arenas and Jason Richardson going at guys on the other team. In recent years, we've seen Kyrie Irving and Brandon Knight try to embarrass the other one with a quick little back-and-forth on the basketball court in which Irving was deemed the victor. Knight put some good moves on Irving during the battle, but failed to finish the shot after most of them, while Irving dazzled the crowd, made Knight fall down, and then made the buckets.
We also saw Tim Hardaway Jr. and Dion Waiters go head-to-head against each other in the Rising Stars Challenge in NOLA last year.
Are we going to get a head-to-head battle this season? Could Burke and Exum go at each other like it's a glorified practice session? Victor Oladipo has already said he'll go right back at anybody who challenges him out there. Can we expect Zach LaVine and Andrew Wiggins to try to outdo each other? Some ankles will quake tonight.
2) Which young big guy has the best chance of stealing the show?
In years past, we've seen guys like Kenneth Faried, DeJuan Blair, and David Lee end up stealing the show from the guys with the ball in their hands all the time. Is there a big man in this competition who can accomplish that? Steven Adams and Jusuf Nurkic probably had the skills mixed in with the personality to try to steal the show, but they won't be around on the court. Who else has that combination of grabbing the spotlight and then knowing what to do with it?
Mason Plumlee will want to warm up the crowd for the dunk contest Saturday night and he loves to run the floor. If the guards reward him with some lobs for him to demolish the rim with, Plumlee has an incredible chance to put up 20-30 points just off dunks alone. For the World Team, Nikola Mirotic might be the best all-around scorer on the floor, but Rudy Gobert has the fantasy of being a guard in the open floor and trying to make the spectacular happen. If he gets loose for a couple breakaways, he might be unstoppable.
3) Are we going to get a dunk contest in the final minute?
Usually these games aren't too close by the end of the two halves. Only three of the last 10 Rising Stars games have ended with a single-digit margin. This can be a good thing because it allows the guys to get out of the way and have an impromptu dunk contest at the end of the game. We've seen John Wall and Jason Richardson put on a show during the final minute. We've even seen Greg Monroe try to stop Wall from stealing the show.
The obvious choices here are Giannis Antetokounmpo (he did this last year), Zach LaVine (everything is a dunk contest to him), and Andrew Wiggins (the man who should be forced to be in a dunk contest) to try to send us into the dunk contest the next night. Wiggins will probably have us pining for someone to make him do the contest next year. He's capable of doing some unreal dunks.
4) Will we see the 300-point barrier get broken?
In 2013, we nearly saw 300 points in the 40-minute game. Charles Barkley's team beat Shaquille O'Neal's team 163-135 for a combined 298 points. We also saw 288 points from the year John Wall won MVP of the game when the East beat the West 148-140 in Los Angeles. Do we have enough firepower and scoring to break 300 points this season? Mirotic, Giannis, Wiggins, Muhammad, LaVine, Oladipo, and Caldwell-Pope could all be explosive scorers in this game, which could turn the scoreboard into a pinball machine.
5) Are we seeing a future All-Star with the Rising Stars' MVP this year?
In 20 years of Rising Stars games (used to be called the Rookie Challenge), we've had 14 MVP's of this game go on to make the actual All-Star Game on Sunday later on in their careers. The list of Anfernee Hardaway, Eddie Jones, Allen Iverson, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Elton Brand, Wally Szczerbiak, Gilbert Arenas, Amar'e Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony, Andre Iguodala, David Lee, Kevin Durant, John Wall, and Kyrie Irving have all made the leap to being All-Stars after winning MVP of this game.
There are some future All-Stars in this current group, but who will it be?