The All-Star Game Intros Featured The Roots And Friends In An NBA Tribute Through The Years

Usually during the night of the NBA’s All-Star Game, the game itself is the high point, as hoops fans get to watch as stars from across the league play in a wonderful offensive exhibition with optional defense. But this year, it’s hard to imagine that anything will be better than the star-studded introduction led by The Roots.

The entire premise for the introduction segment was a debate over which era of basketball was the greatest. Jidenna represented the early days of basketball, former “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs showed love to the 1970s, the argument for the 1980s was laid out by D.J. Jazzy Jeff and Darryl McDaniels of Run DMC, and the NBA’s “modern era” received praise from Michael B. Jordan.

We’re all looking forward to watching the All-Star Game for a zillion different reasons – we promise, it’s for reasons other than there’s a chance that Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant play with one another – but the bar was set so high by this introduction that it may just be worth watching this for the next few hours.

At the very least, can we have The Roots play music in the background while Black Thought does play by play for everything that happens? All respect to the TNT broadcast crew, but that would be incredible.

If the intro’s good enough for Jay Z, it’s good enough for all of us.