NBA All-Star Weekend

The National Basketball Association All-Star Weekend is a weekend festival held every February during the middle of the NBA regular season that consists of a variety of basketball events, exhibitions, and performances culminating in the NBA All-Star Game held on Sunday night. No regular season games are held during this period, which is also known as the All-Star break.

The All-Star Game

The All-Star Game, held on Sunday, is the main event of the weekend. The 2016 game was held at Air Canada Centre in Toronto, home of the Toronto Raptors. Charlotte, North Carolina will host in 2017.

Events of All-Star Weekend

The NBA Jam Session, a "theme park of basketball", has been a part of the All-Star festivities since 1992, with fans able to take part in numerous interactive basketball related activities from Thursday through Monday. The NBA Jam Session is usually targeted to young fans.

Friday

All-star

All-star (also stylized as All-Star) is a term designating an individual as having a high level of performance in their field. Originating in sports, it has since drifted into vernacular and been borrowed heavily by the entertainment industry. It can also be used for a group of individuals, who are popular in certain areas.

Sports

"All-star" as a sports term refers to individual players named to an "all-star" roster or team representing the top performers during and before the end of a season in a given sport, or to a list of top participants who played in individual sports such as golf and bowling. Events limited to such honorees are referred to as "all-star games" or events.

In American team sports the premier all-star games are the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, NBA All-Star Game, Pro Bowl, NHL All-Star Game, and the MLS All-Star Game. Many all-star teams, such as collegiate "all-conference" and All-America squads, are recognitions of performance only, without the connotation of those selected ever being teammates in a game.

1995

1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday (dominical letter A) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1995th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 995th year of the 2nd millennium, the 95th year of the 20th century, and the 6th year of the 1990s decade.

This was the year that the Internet entered public consciousness and also the year it was completely privatized and the United States Government no longer funded it with public money - in April 1995 the NSFNET was retired.America Online and Prodigy offered access to the World Wide Web system for the first time this year, releasing browsers that made it easily accessible to the general public.

Events

January

Game

A game is structured form of play, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).

Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational, or psychological role.

Attested as early as 2600 BC, games are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures. The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, and Mancala are some of the oldest known games.

Order of Nine Angles

The Order of Nine Angles (ONA; O9A) is a Satanic and Left-Hand Path occult group based in the United Kingdom, but with affiliated groups in various other parts of the world. Claiming to have been established in the 1960s, it arose to public recognition in the early 1980s, attracting attention for its espousal of Neo-Nazi ideologies and activism. Describing its approach as "Traditional Satanism", it has been academically identified as also exhibiting Hermetic and Neo-Pagan elements in its beliefs.

According to the Order's own account, it was established in the Welsh Marches of Western England during the late 1960s by a woman who had previously been involved in a secretive pre-Christian tradition surviving in the region. This account also states that in 1973 a man named "Anton Long" was initiated into the group, subsequently becoming its Grand Master. Several academic commentators to have studied the ONA express the view that the name "Anton Long" is probably the pseudonym of the British Neo-Nazi activist David Myatt, although Myatt has denied that this is the case. From the late 1970s onward, Long authored a number of books and articles propagating the Order's ideas, and in 1988 it began production of its own journal, Fenrir. Through these ventures it established links with other Neo-Nazi Satanist groups around the world, furthering its cause through embracing the internet in the 2000s.