SALT LAKE CITY — I was fortunate enough to be credentialed for the entire 2023 All-Star weekend thanks to USA Today’s Sports Media Group.
I stayed in Salt Lake City, UT for roughly five days and was granted access to all of the events and media availabilities. I attended Friday’s Rising Stars games, Saturday’s multiple events headlined by the Dunk Contest and Sunday’s All-Star game.
In terms of work, I was there mainly to focus on the three Oklahoma City Thunder representatives in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Josh Giddey and Jalen Williams — the former making his first All-Star appearance and the latter two participating in the Rising Stars challenge.
Being credentialed for All-Star weekend was one of my career highlights.
All-Star weekend celebrated the unofficial halfway mark of the regular season where only the best players in the league are invited. The fact that the Thunder had three representatives is a hugely positive sign of where the young core is going.
Because of that, I want to share my experience with the readers on what it was like covering the All-Star extravaganza from a first-hand perspective.
This journal will be broken down by days and will list events in chronological order.
- After covering the previous night’s Thunder game against the Houston Rockets, I went to bed at 1 a.m. CT and woke up at 5 a.m. CT to catch an 8 a.m. CT flight.
- I was on the same flight with Locked On’s Rylan Stiles, The Athletic’s & Down To Dunk’s Andrew Schlecht. Thunder assistant coach Dave Bliss was also on the flight as well as Rockets forward & Dunk Contest participant K.J. Martin.
- I also saw Aleksej Pokusevski at the OKC airport.
- Arrived in Salt Lake City at 11 a.m. MT. Took a media bus to the media hotel to check in. Immediately went to go pick up my credential and food vouchers at a second hotel location.
- I then went to the NBA Crossover event at the Salt Palace Convention Center and spent most of the afternoon there as it was only open for media and Utah Jazz season ticket holders.
- I used my food vouchers to eat and proceeded to play several of the games offered there. I was impressed with the creativity involved in the games as you can only do so much with basketballs and a hoop.
- My favorite game was connect four with basketballs instead of black and red chips. (I went 5-0 against Black Sports Online’s Daniel Bell).
- Guess I’m really good at basketball connect four ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
- Other games included a pop-a-shot…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at OKC Thunder Wire…