NBA All-Star Weekend schedule for Friday: Hall of Fame announcement headlines busy first day

The NBA’s All-Star weekend is widely considered the most entertaining throughout the four major professional sports, and much of that has to do with the fact there’s never really a break from the festivities once they kick off on Friday.

Coverage starts in the morning with the BBVA Compass Rising Stars Challenge practice at 10:30 a.m. ET, where rookies and sophomores selected for the event will warm up together for the first time. That will be immediately followed by media day at 12:30 p.m., which involves all players and coaches who will be participating in the events over the weekend.

At 3:30 p.m. the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame will announce its 2014 finalists for potential induction, which has become an All-Star weekend staple. All of these events will be televised on NBA TV and will be followed by ‘The Beat’ and ‘The Starters’ at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., respectively.

Then the games begin. The Sprint NBA All-Star Celebrity Game will tip at 7 p.m. on ESPN, followed by the Rising Stars Challenge at 9 p.m. on TNT. ‘Inside the NBA’ will follow the late game on the same channel before NBA TV picks up the coverage again with NBA Gametime at midnight.

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