It’s finally the day we’ve all been waiting for.  There has been a lot of build-up and tons of great stuff put out by Suns.com.  With 9 people roaming around Phoenix and reporting everything they’ve experienced on Suns.com, you can check out what was happening at All-Star Weekend even if you weren’t able to attend yourself.  But everything that we’ve done during the past week was to prepare for tonight’s game.  For three hours, you’ll be able to watch arguably the best basketball players in the world play together on one court.  For basketball fans, there isn’t much better than this.  

Check back throughout the evening for live updates on the game and events in the arena that you may not see on TV.
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It’s time for All-Star Saturday Night!  And Suns.com’s Dan Hilton (and possibly some special guests from other Suns.com crew members located throughout the building) will be providing live coverage of the event from high above the rafters at the US Airways Center.  Check back throughout the event to get information you won’t see anywhere else on the web! (more…)

Dan Hilton will be following the Rookie Challenge and Youth Jam live during the first half on Friday night.  Check back throughout the game for insights you won’t get anywhere else!

8:02 pm – The rookies are up by only three at halftime after Green made an amazing halfcourt shot at the buzzer.  It’s been a very entertaining game.  I think it goes to show what type of players the NBA has to look forward to.  This is a great showcase to see what these guys can do when the veterans aren’t around.  And they should only get better as they get more time in the league.   

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I’m back in the Skybox for most of Friday and there is a lot of activity going on in the arena today.  

• Run-throughs for the Haier Shooting Stars competition started at 9:00am.  Again, there are stand-ins for every person who will be on the court during the real thing on Saturday night.  For the Shooting Stars competition, that means there are 12 guys on the stage to go through the introductions.  Then they actually get to go through an actual competition.  The only thing I hope is that the actual competition goes better on Saturday than it is going in rehearsals.  Most of the guys look like they’ve played basketball before but that half-court shot must be a killer.  They finally changed the rules for the stand-ins so they would only take one shot from each location other than half-court.  It was just taking too long!
• After the Shooting Stars rehearsal, they did the same thing for the skills and dunk contests.  This was a little easier for the four participants.  The hardest thing for them (and it always seems like for the real players as well) was the bounce pass through the vertical hoop.  The ball seems to go through and then bounces out.
• One of the guys doing the skills contest thought he would add a little flair at the end when he needed to make a lay-up and instead tried to dunk the ball.  Unfortunately for him, his legs were a little more tired than he anticipated and the ball hit off the front of the rim.  He quickly attempted and made another lay-up and then was laughed at as he left the court.  The camera guys decided to help him out by continually showing his miss on the big screen.

The entire Suns.com crew is now heading to the All-Star Media Availability for the next 2 hours.  I expect we’ll have some fun stories from that experience.

When something big comes around like the All-Star game or the playoffs, the Suns.com crew isn’t satisfied with just sitting in the newsroom watching the game on TV while simultaneously working. So long before I started working here, the department was given permission to work from what used to be the Organ Loft of the arena. We’ve begun calling it the “Skybox.”

The Skybox isn’t perfect by any means. We can’t see the scoreboard above the court, we’re higher than even the nosebleed seats and there is no elevator so we get to carry all of our computers, cameras and any other equipment we may have up several flights of stairs. But it’s definitely better than listening to the crowd have a good time and knowing we are at the arena but not really experiencing the game! (more…)