DAVIDSON, N.C. — As the league’s brightest young stars preened and prepped to roll the ball out under the lights 22 miles south in Charlotte, the scene at John M. Belk Arena stood as a reminder that the All-Star break is only nominal for NBA teams. The drive up I-77 includes a construction-fueled bottleneck that turns a 30-minute ride from Uptown Charlotte into 45—multiplied by the general swath of traffic that floods All-Star Weekend annually. Yet surely, there hadn’t been this many scouts at Davidson College since Stephen Curry’s heyday.
With 44 scouts—a number the NBA expects to double over the weekend—from 24 NBA teams scheduled to attend Friday night’s game against St.