Date | February 19, 2017 | ||
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Arena | Smoothie King Center | ||
City | New Orleans, Louisiana | ||
National anthem | TBA | ||
Referees | TBA | ||
Halftime show | John Legend | ||
Network | TNT | ||
Announcers |
Marv Albert, Reggie Miller and Chris Webber Kevin Harlan, Reggie Miller, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O'Neal (All-Star Saturday Night) Matt Winer, Grant Hill and Chris Webber (Rising Stars Challenge) |
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NBA All-Star Game | |||
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The 2017 NBA All-Star Game is an exhibition basketball game that will be played on February 19, 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana at the Smoothie King Center. It will be the 66th edition of the event. It was initially planned to be held at Spectrum Center in Charlotte, home of the Charlotte Hornets. If the game had remained in Charlotte, it would have been the second time that Charlotte hosted the All-Star Game. The city previously hosted in 1991 at the now-demolished Charlotte Coliseum.
On August 19, 2016, the NBA chose the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, home of the New Orleans Pelicans to host the All-Star Game, after it was pulled out of Charlotte because of the controversy surrounding North Carolina's "bathroom bill", better known as HB2. The 2017 NBA All-Star Game is the first major sporting event in the United States to be relocated for political reasons since 1990. In that instance, the National Football League (NFL) relocated Super Bowl XXVII out of Tempe, Arizona, because the state did not recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day.TNT will nationally televise the game.
HB2 became law in late March 2016. It bans, among other things, NC city governments from passing ordinances that protect members of the LGBT community from discrimination. Charlotte already passed such an ordinance in February 2016. However, when HB2 went into effect, it terminated said ordinance. Charlotte, as a result, currently does not have any anti-discrimination protection in place. Talks about the NBA pulling the game from Charlotte began to rise.