This story aired in the February 13, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
The NBA’s All-Star Weekend arrives in town tomorrow.
It’s a three-day celebration of professional basketball’s top talent. And there will be lots of crowd pleasers, like the slam dunk contest and three-point shootout.
The annual event culminates on Sunday afternoon, with the All-Star Game at Chase Center. It’s the perfect opportunity to showcase Bay Area artists who adore the sport and center the NBA’s most memorable players as the subject of their work.
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It’s been a full quarter-century since the Bay Area last hosted All-Star Weekend, at an arena not yet known as “Roaracle,” or the canvas on which Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors would craft countless masterpieces.
Plenty of tourists will be joining the local fan base for this weekend’s festivities, with some estimates projecting more than 130,000 visitors. Beyond the traditional on-court activities, a range of panels, parties, and creative functions are taking place on both sides of the Bay. “The Art Of The Game”—an exhibit featuring 25 local artists paying tribute to this year’s All-Stars and past Warriors legends—might just be the most compelling.
“This is a real generational opportunity,” says Jeff Perlstein. He’s the co-founder of SoleSpace Lab, an Oakland-based maker space teaching people how to reuse and upcycle sneakers, and he’s hosting this weekend’s art show in San Francisco’s much-maligned Mid-Market district.
“We're here thanks to the generosity of a project called Market Street Arts,” he tells me, “which is a project to invigorate the Mid-Market area with pop-ups and also try to land more established arts programming to really activate this part of the city.”
Perlstein’s no stranger to putting on large-scale art shows. At the original SoleSpace—a shoe store by day and event venue by night—Perlstein hosted five Warriors-themed exhibits from 2016 to 2019, starting with “Dubs Against The World,” which proved to be a huge hit. Last fall, he circled back to that legacy, honoring former Warriors’ star Klay Thompson’s return to the Bay with an art tribute called “Klay Area.”
“The artists from ‘Klay Area’ came together,” he continues, “and really wanted to put on a show for the ages that features the All-Stars from all the different teams, along with all-time Warriors greats, in what we're calling our ‘Wall Of Warriors.’”
I wanted to get a sense of the various artists involved in this weekend’s show, and find out why basketball—more than so many other sports—seems to be such an enduring source of inspiration for those working in creative fields.
Kaitlyn Joe-Johnson, one of the featured artists and a lifelong Warriors fan, told me that basketball’s quick on-court action “can be read so abstractly in art,” and that the players’ larger-than-life personalities make them easy muses.
She’s been drawing since she was a young child.
“I love ‘Peanuts’ and ‘Calvin and Hobbes,’” she reveals, “and that definitely influenced my style as an artist. Big head, little body, just like a fun way to create cartoon versions of these players.”
Another artist participating in this weekend’s show is 22 year-old Niko Karim-Strang.
A self-identified “massive Warriors fan, super into basketball my whole life,” he went to the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. As fate would have it, he landed a professor who was a huge hoops fan too, and encouraged him to bring his love of the sport to his painting practice. He did just that, while also pursuing another keen interest.
“I got really into studying 15th-, 16th-century religious art,” he shares, “and the impact that those paintings had on the people that followed the stories of the Bible. My big idea was, ‘How can I take that same concept and apply it to basketball, and how can I be a storyteller, a documentarian, a mythologist for basketball?’”
As any devoted sports fan can testify to, the similarities between religious worship and rooting for your team run deep.
“Whether you're religious or not,” Karim-Strang explains, “on the last play of the game, you're gonna’ be sitting there with your hands together, talking about, ‘Please make this shot, I'll do anything!’”
He pulls on a recent experience to flesh out the parallel of going to church and going to a game, “where we're all gathering in the same place to witness this holy event”—Klay Thompson’s first visit back to the Bay in an opponent’s uniform.
“At the end of the game,” he recounts, “when Steph got hot, hit those couple threes back-to-back, and just turned to the camera and started screaming. I can speak to it, I was there that night—it was this religious, out-of-body experience! The spirit of basketball is a spirit in itself.”
Shomari Smith is a veteran of the Bay Area arts scene. His portraits of iconic artists, athletes, and activists blend the intricate, graffiti-style lettering of his Oakland upbringing with deliberately large swaths of negative space. They can be seen all over town, including at Chase Center. For him, the reason basketball captures the imagination of so many creatives is actually pretty practical.
“We can clearly see their faces,” Smith states matter-of-factly. “The other guys are hidden by helmets and hats. And I think that really does play a part in getting to know the players, understanding the personalities. Every expression that Steph Curry makes, we see.”
Smith’s one of the older and more established artists in this weekend’s show. He’s been an Oakland staple for decades, working with the legendary Hieroglyphics hip-hop crew, and founding the gorgeous E14 Gallery in Old Oakland.
I asked him what he remembered most from the 2000 All-Star Weekend, last time it was in town.
“Greatest dunk contest ever,” he says. “But it wasn't much of a contest!”
Vince Carter, a first-time All-Star in 2000, dominated the competition with a series of mind-blowing acrobatic feats, culminating with a dunk in which he stuffed his whole forearm through the hoop and hung on the rim from his inner elbow for an extra second, so that everyone could comprehend exactly what they’d just seen.
“Overall, best exhibition of creativity, just flooring everybody,” Smith fondly recalls. “It brought the dunk contest back, it really did.”
And what significance does he see in All-Star Weekend coming back to the Bay 25 years later, I ask.
“It's really important,” he declares. “It shows we can be back on the radar. It sort of feels like there's been an abandonment almost. I think that a lot of people have just been priced out of the Bay Area, which is tough. I think that an event like this is going to revitalize us. Just for one weekend, we’re coming together in light of everything that may not be great—we can turn it off for a minute, go out, see good art, and enjoy the competitions.”
As for “The Art Of The Game,” it not only offers locals and tourists alike a chance to tap in with the Bay Area’s creative ecosystem, but it’s also an opportunity for the featured artists to broaden their own palettes, find fresh inspiration, and put their fans on to the work of fellow art-makers.
“What I love about Jeff's shows,” Smith shares, “is that it's like a family of artists coming together. We're all supporting each other. Everyone who follows one particular artist will then find out about the rest of these artists, and that’s just amazing.”
Genuinely excited about the painters and pieces with whom he’ll be sharing wall space this weekend, he expounds on the value of the collaboration.
“I love everyone's work,” he declares. “Some of them are so clever, I get that feeling, like, ‘I wish I'd have thought of that!’ That’s when you know you're in the right company. Because those are the people who push you to take that next step, to try that next thing, to stay creative.”
With an action-packed weekend on hand, and the NBA’s brightest stars balling out mere feet from the Bay, a pop-up on Market Street might just be the top highlight to hoops heads with a penchant for vibrant visual arts.
"The Art Of The Game" opening reception is Friday, February 14, from 5 to 8pm. You can find tickets to that and the exhibit by clicking here.
