The NBA Crossover Event
by Camille G.
Every February the NBA hosts an all star game which showcases twenty four of the league's star players. The All Star game is a weekend long event consisting of basketball events, exhibition, and performances which will be shown during the actual game, on Sunday night. Though this is not the only thing the NBA is hosting this weekend. Friday through Sunday, from noon to 8:00pm the NBA is hosting a Crossover event. It is held at the Cleveland Public Auditorium.
On Thursday, the CLEnagers were invited inside, along with others, before the public. Inside there’s different booths with activities you can do that can keep you entertained for hours.
When you first get inside the venue, you are greeted with a glass wall full of basketballs saying ‘NBA Crossover’, and if you follow the path past the wall, you see a hallway long exhibit of previous players' basketball jerseys. At the end of the hallway is where the real fun begins. As soon as you walk in you see all the interactive booths you can go to. The first interactive booth you see when you first walk in is a box. Though, it’s not like any other boxes. As soon as you open the door to it, you see it is filled with mirrors all along the wall with LED lights wrapped around them. In the center of the box, there is a bedazzled basketball with the NBA’s logo on it.
Next to that booth, there is a showcase of the Cleveland Cavaliers championship trophy, where you can sit down next to it and take pictures with it. Directly behind that is the AT&T Argumentative Reality booth. This was an interactive booth, which scans your body and puts you into one of the four scenarios you choose. You can choose different motions that you want your argumentative reality character to move in. Next to that is Facebook‘s Virtual Reality booth. In this booth, you can try out the Oculus, Facebook‘s virtual reality device, and play a game called Slicing the Beat, where you have to slice red and blue squares based on the color of the sword you have in your hand. Playing the game was one of the most fun experiences I had there as I have never tried a virtual reality headset out before. In the middle of the venue there was a basketball court where you could participate in an open court. There was another basketball court there where you shoot baskets for different prices depending on your score.
As well as having interactive booths, they also had different vendors. There were food vendors and there were around five tables of food to choose from, and of course I couldn’t eat them all, but the place I did decide to eat from, which was Zanzibar Soul Food Fusion, had great food. They were serving chicken and Soul Rolls. I had never heard of Soul Rolls until that day. A Soul Roll is a combination of any different soul food items. I’m not 100% sure on what was inside this one, but it was good. Another vendor that they had there was The College Cuber. Also known as Dylan Sadiq, he creates portraits of professional athletes and sports organizations out of Rubik’s cubes. In the downstairs section of the venue, were three more vendors; Canada Goose, an art gallery of some basketball teams, and Tissot. All three of these had great interactive booths.
If you have nothing to do this weekend, then you should check out the Crossover event. It is a fun experience that shouldn’t be looked over, as the NBA All-Star game is hosted in a different city each year. It is a once and a lifetime event for us Clevelanders who don’t really travel for professional sport team events. For only $30.00, there’s something fun for everyone to do there, no matter the age and is an event to take advantage of. I hope you guys check it out!
