Rising Stars Challenge

The Rising Stars Challenge is an exhibition basketball game held by the National Basketball Association (NBA) on the Friday before the annual All-Star Game as part of the All-Star Weekend. The players are first- and second-year players selected by the NBA's assistant coaches. Two people designated as "general managers" draft players for the two opposing teams.

The Rookie Challenge, established in 1994, was originally competed by two randomly selected teams composed entirely of first-year players. This format was continued until 1996, when it was changed to pit rookie teams of both the Eastern and the Western Conference against each other. In 1999, the game was cancelled as a result of the NBA lockout. Since the 1998 rookie class did not compete that year, the game was revamped and featured a team of standout first-year players ('Rookies') against a team of standout second-year players ('Sophomores'). For 2012 and 2013, the format was changed to having two teams drafted by former NBA superstars Charles Barkley (Team Chuck) and Shaquille O'Neal (Team Shaq). In 2014, the two teams were drafted by Chris Webber (Team Webber) and Grant Hill (Team Hill). The format of the game and name was changed to the Rising Stars Challenge in 2012. The game format changed in 2015 to USA vs World, where each team should choose at least three Rookies and three Sophomores, and the squad of each team should have four back courts, four front courts and two swingmans.

Rising Star

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February 17

February 17 is the 48th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 317 days remaining until the end of the year (318 in leap years).

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Rising

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Star

A star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Other stars are visible to the naked eye from Earth during the night, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their immense distance from Earth. Historically, the most prominent stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms, and the brightest stars gained proper names. Extensive catalogues of stars have been assembled by astronomers, which provide standardized star designations.

For at least a portion of its life, a star shines due to thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in its core, releasing energy that traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space. Once the hydrogen in the core of a star is nearly exhausted, almost all naturally occurring elements heavier than helium are created by stellar nucleosynthesis during the star's lifetime and, for some stars, by supernova nucleosynthesis when it explodes. Near the end of its life, a star can also contain degenerate matter. Astronomers can determine the mass, age, metallicity (chemical composition), and many other properties of a star by observing its motion through space, luminosity, and spectrum respectively. The total mass of a star is the principal determinant of its evolution and eventual fate. Other characteristics of a star, including diameter and temperature, change over its life, while the star's environment affects its rotation and movement. A plot of the temperature of many stars against their luminosities, known as a Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (H–R diagram), allows the age and evolutionary state of a star to be determined.