{"id":67033,"date":"2018-02-16T23:19:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-17T05:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=67033"},"modified":"2018-02-16T23:19:42","modified_gmt":"2018-02-17T05:19:42","slug":"inside-the-sights-sounds-and-people-of-the-fake-all-star-saturday-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/inside-the-sights-sounds-and-people-of-the-fake-all-star-saturday-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the sights, sounds and people of the Fake All-Star Saturday Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Patrick Engel<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/i><\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES \u2013 There\u2019s no need to wait until Saturday night. Here are the final dramatic moments of the NBA All-Star Verizon Slam Dunk contest.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all comes down to this,\u201d the emcee bellows. \u201cLet\u2019s see what Victor Oladipo has in store. He can make or break it right now.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Instead, he\u2019ll fake it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In place of Oladipo, 24-year-old ex-college player Jarrell Tate trots onto the court. It\u2019s Wednesday afternoon in an empty Staples Center, and Tate is posing as the Indiana Pacers\u2019 star guard during the practice run-through of Saturday\u2019s events.<\/p>\n

Before the two-and-a-half-hour extravagant confab known as All-Star Saturday Night, there\u2019s All-Star Practice Round Wednesday Afternoon inside the same silver saucer of an arena that will pack about 15,000 people into a show of deft displays of athleticism.<\/p>\n

Sometime around 7:30 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday, either Oladipo, Dennis Smith Jr., Larry Nance Jr. or Donovan Mitchell will hoist a gold basketball fastened to a wood block signifying their supremacy in the slam dunk contest, the glitziest Saturday event and the magnum opus of this lavish gathering that will take up nearly all of TNT\u2019s primetime slots on Saturday.<\/p>\n

No attention, though, will go to the preparation that makes the All-Star Weekend events the glamorous production they are each year. That\u2019s the expected standard, because that\u2019s almost always how it\u2019s done. Event presentation is comparable to officiating games. If it\u2019s done well, the audience won\u2019t notice its existence.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday during this one-of-a-kind rehearsal, Staples Center is hazy and dim. About 100 production crew members set up cameras and lay cable as the emcee announces the events like they\u2019re the real thing. The practice round is a precise run-through of the script to make sure it lasts the appropriate amount of time, the graphics function properly and player names are pronounced correctly.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one problem, though. The players aren\u2019t in town yet.<\/p>\n

The solution? Have someone else pose as them. This is where Tate and others enter the picture. About 20 former college players from all levels are brought in to impersonate the actual participants. These players actually do a mock skills challenge, 3-point shootout and dunk contest as 12 people watch Wednesday\u2019s practice from the stands. Most are friends and families of the impersonators.<\/p>\n

None of the players are likely to end up in the NBA, or even the G League. The event presentation crew just needs bodies for the day to help create life-like practice. But for these players, this is much more than being a fill-in. It\u2019s a story they\u2019ll tell for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n

==<\/p>\n

Jesse Jones had never been to Los Angeles until Tuesday. A New Jersey native, he spent his entire life on the East Coast and in 2016, finished a two-year stint as a guard for the University of Bridgeport, a private Division II in Connecticut. He now runs a branded Instagram account, @filayyyy, where he does voice-overs of basketball highlights. It\u2019s up to 650,000 followers.<\/p>\n

Jones\u2019 chance to travel west came via a phone call from Nick Ansom, the founder of Venice Basketball League, a streetball league based in Venice, Calif. , and the man tasked with finding some players for the practice round. He noticed Jones\u2019 Instagram and offered to fly him to L.A. for the week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, is this real?\u201d Jones says.<\/p>\n

Jones received a free flight and tickets to the real All-Star events in return for his help. Most of all, he says, he hopes the trip leads to more brand awareness for Filayyyy. For about an hour on Wednesday, though, he poses as Klay Thompson in a practice 3-point shootout.<\/p>\n

Just like Thompson will do Saturday, Jones has one minute to shoot 25 3-pointers, five from each of the five designated spots on the floor. Each make is worth one point, and each make with the nine red and blue \u201cmoneyball\u201d basketballs is worth two. The maximum score in a round is 34.<\/p>\n

A career 45 percent shooter from 3-point range in his two years at Bridgeport, Jones scores 18 in his first round, and 16 in his next. It\u2019s his best Thompson impression.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like the Warriors, and I\u2019m a shooter,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI like shooting like other shooters.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strobe lights flash around the arena as his round ends at the buzzer. The emcee urges the crowd to clap for Thompson. The empty arena says silent.<\/p>\n

==<\/p>\n

\"Jarrell
Jarrell Tate, posing as Victor Oladipo, attempts a dunk during Wednesday’s practice run-through of Saturday’s slam dunk contest (Serena Yeh\/MEDILL).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like Saturday, Wednesday\u2019s final practice event is the slam dunk contest. After the Smith Jr., Nance Jr., and Mitchell impersonators go, the emcee introduces Oladipo, and in comes Tate.<\/p>\n

\u201cStaples Center, make some noise!\u201d the emcee yells.<\/p>\n

Tate was a guard at East Los Angeles College and Bethesda University in nearby Anaheim. Like Jones, Ansom gave the Birmingham, Ala. native the chance to be an impersonator. He knew Tate from his previous seasons playing in the Venice League.<\/p>\n

The Oladipo role was randomly assigned to Tate. He considers it a perfect fit. They play the same position. He thinks of himself a strong defender like Oladipo.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, ‘OK, Oladipo. I\u2019ll mess with that,'” Tate says. “A lot of people tell me I play like him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tate moves onto the mock final round. He misses his first dunk attempt. The second, too. The emcee builds the suspense for his final attempt.<\/p>\n

At the emcee\u2019s prompting, Tate jogs to the wing and bounces the ball into the air so it will descend somewhere in the paint. He runs, leaps, grabs the ball on its descent and tries a 180-degree dunk. It goes halfway down, then rims out.<\/p>\n

Needing to run through the trophy presentation, the emcee and fake judges declare Tate the fake winner. He goes to half court, is handed an invisible trophy, faces a camera, and smiles while waving to no one. The pictures or video won\u2019t be seen. No passer-by outside will know what was happening inside. Tate doesn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting a chance to dunk and being inspired to dunk, that was great,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d never been in something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

An empty arena, it turns out, is full of memorable moments.<\/p>\n

Photo at top: An empty Staples Center during the practice run-through of All-Star Saturday night held on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Patrick Engel Medill Reports LOS ANGELES \u2013 There\u2019s no need to wait until Saturday night. Here are the final dramatic moments of the NBA All-Star Verizon Slam Dunk contest. \u201cIt all comes down to this,\u201d the emcee bellows. \u201cLet\u2019s see what Victor Oladipo has in store. He can make or break it right now.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":67040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4047,31,3987],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nbaallstar2018","category-sports","category-winter-2018"],"yoast_head":"\nInside the sights, sounds and people of the Fake All-Star Saturday Night - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/inside-the-sights-sounds-and-people-of-the-fake-all-star-saturday-night\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inside the sights, sounds and people of the Fake All-Star Saturday Night - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By: Patrick Engel Medill Reports LOS ANGELES \u2013 There\u2019s no need to wait until Saturday night. 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