The NBA All Star Game Will Return to a Very Different Bay Area

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quarter century ago, during the 2000 NBA All-Star slam dunk contest, Vince Carter put on a show that solidified his nickname of “Half-Man Half-Amazing.”

He hit a reverse 360 dunk that made Shaquille O’Neal react like a 7-foot kid. He followed it with “The East Bay Funk,” in which he hit off a bounce pass from his cousin and fellow member of the NBA Hall of Fame Tracy McGrady.

On his final attempt, he jumped so far into the sky that upon his descent, he was able to put his entire right forearm into the rim, hanging there for a few seconds.

The stars in the audience were stunned. Carter hanging off the rim from his forearm is an image forever etched into basketball history.

The All-Star Game returns to the Bay Area this February. A lot has changed since then.

When Vince Carter finally returned to Earth, he landed on the floor of the Oakland Arena. Professional hoops are no longer played there; the Warriors moved to the Chase Center in San Francisco in 2019.

Over the past decade, the Dubs have won four NBA championships, three before leaving Oakland. But this year, after a promising start, they’re playing .500 ball. As star guard Steph Curry said in a recent interview, “We’re very mid right now.”

In fact, the whole Bay Area pro sports landscape, once rich with accolades, has been mid.

The San Francisco 49ers, one of the winningest franchises in NFL history, had a dismal year. Over the past three decades, they’ve repeatedly come close to being crowned champs, but they haven’t won a Super Bowl since 1995.

The Raiders, founded in Oakland in 1966, moved to Las Vegas in 2020. And last year, the Oakland Athletics, the baseball team that once shared a stadium with the Raiders, also left for Las Vegas — taking the scenic route through Sacramento for a couple seasons.

Sacramento sports fans are no stranger to change either. Their basketball team, the Kings, recently fired head coach Mike Brown. That’s par for the course; the team has had eight different head coaches in the past 12 years.

The only remaining major league baseball team in Northern California, the San Francisco Giants, were two games under .500 last year. And Northern California’s only pro hockey team, the San Jose Sharks, had the worst record in the entire NHL last year — and they aren’t doing much better this season.

Sure, it’s not all bad. The Bay FC soccer team had a solid inaugural year. The Golden State Valkyries play their first WNBA game later this spring. And the Oakland Roots soccer team is set to play a few games at the Oakland Coliseum next season.

But on the whole, it’s been rough for local sports fans. Last year we mourned the loss of legendary athletes Rickey Henderson and Willie Mays. We even said goodbye to an entire collegiate athletic division, the Pac-12.

All this to say, when the All-Star Game comes around, you might run into some sports fans with some chips on their shoulders.

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ot only has sports been mid, the cost of living has been high. That’s reflected most directly in the issue of housing disparity. In 2000, the City’s second-ever homeless census counted 5,376 people living without proper shelter. Last May, San Francisco tallied more than 8,300.

A 2018 United Nations report characterized the living conditions of San Francisco and Oakland’s unhoused population as “cruel and inhuman” and “a violation of multiple human rights.” Those conditions were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and last year, the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision led to large sweeps of encampments all around the region.

Even with these efforts to rid the streets of the people who call them home, mass homelessness is so widespread that visitors enjoying the glitz of All-Star weekend will have no choice but to be at least subtly aware of what’s going on.

Concerns about homelessness, crime and the fentanyl epidemic have fueled political turmoil, as voters have rallied for tough-on-crime stances, voted against prison reform initiatives and lost faith in elected officials — even recalling two local district attorneys and the mayor of Oakland.

As driverless cars whiz past the neon lights of cannabis dispensaries, new high rises have redrawn the City’s skyline. The region has grown not just vertically but horizontally, with new developments adding to urban sprawl.

And the influence of tech money in the region is as clear as the Rakuten logo on the Warriors’ official jersey. If you haven’t been here since 2000, it’s changed a lot. Even to those of us from here, it looks like an entirely new place.

In the winter of 2000, I was a 12 year-old aspiring baseball player, but I couldn’t pass up free tickets gifted to my oldest friend Jon and I for the NBA All-Star weekend rookie game. We considered hiding out in the bathroom to see the dunk contest later that evening, but ended up hanging out in front of the arena and enjoying ourselves.

The energy in the Town was live. Around the arena, radio station vans pulled up and people played arcade-style hoop games. Despite the losing records of the local sports teams and the community issues of the time, it was fun.

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o as we dig deeper into 2025, I acknowledge that some of us are on edge about both national and local issues. And yeah, our pro sports teams are going through something right now.

But this event, first and foremost, is for the home team. Make it memorable. And to visitors coming to the Bay, be prepared: there are different realities based on your economic status. After bringing your luggage straight to the hotel instead of leaving it in your car, come out and enjoy the festivities.

There will inevitably be a protest of some sort, you’ll hear some E-40, and I’d bet my pink slip that there’ll be at least one sideshow that weekend. This is one of the most unique places in the world, mostly because there are so many people here from all around the world.

While our sports teams (hopefully) get on the mend, there’s arguably no place with more game. Soak some.