NBA All-Star Weekend is an opportunity to check out the best basketball players in the world, but more broadly speaking, it’s a celebration basketball culture. From sneaker drops and pop-ups to parties and concerts, there’s an awful lot more to All-Star than the in-arena festivities.
Given how important music is to All-Star Weekend, with various artists performing at brand houses, parties, and at the game itself, we wanted to find out what the players are listening to. At All-Star Media Day and in our various sit-downs with players across the weekend we asked a very simple question: “If you had to pick one song for warmups to get ready for a game, what would it be?”
While players were able to immediately offer answers on hoops questions, we got a lot of answers for this prefaced with, “Ooh, that’s a tough one.” Most eventually were able to settle on their top warmup song, but some gave us a few artists they listen to, while a few simply couldn’t even narrow it down that far.
You can listen to the Spotify playlist with all the songs chosen by players at All-Star Weekend — J. Cole is heavily represented. It’s a pretty eclectic mix of new and old, with no duplicate artists outside of J. Cole. Below that, you can see who picked what (and a few answers that aren’t available on Spotify).
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Giannis Antetokounmpo — “Love Yourz” by J. Cole
Blake Griffin — “Eye Of The Tiger” by Survivor
Klay Thompson — “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” by DMX
Bradley Beal — “Red Room” by Offset
D’Angelo Russell — “Rise And Shine” by J. Cole
Karl-Anthony Towns — “Programs” by Mac Miller
Nikola Vucevic — “Pitbull” by Booba
LaMarcus Aldridge — “Middle Child” by J. Cole (technically said, “the new J. Cole song”)
P.J. Tucker — “The Payback” by James Brown
Donovan Mitchell — “Nonstop” by Drake
Trae Young — “What More Can I Say” by Jay-Z
John Collins — “Ain’t About The Money” by T.I. feat. Young Thug
Marvin Bagley III — “Black Friday” by J. Cole
Cedi Osman — “Yosemite” by Travis Scott
Kawhi Leonard — “Not really one song, but I have a couple artists I like. I like Nipsey Hussle, Erykah Badu, 2 Chainz, I like Sauce Walka a little bit, just going towards one of those artists.” We went with “Last Time That I Checc’d” by Nipsey Hussle featuring YG for this list.
Khris Middleton — “Anything by J. Cole or Lil Wayne.” I took this as the opportunity to put “Fireman” on the list, because that’s was heavy in the rotation for high school hoops warmups back in the day and it still goes. Also, we already had four J. Cole songs.
Kemba Walker — “Hoodie SZN by A Boogie and The WIZRD by Future are heavy in the rotation right now.” We put “Demons and Angels” by A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie feat. Juice WRLD on the list.
Damian Lillard — “I don’t really know, man. That’s a tough question, that’s a tough question.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Kevin Durant — “I mean, come on, man. If I had five kids, it’s like which one is the favorite. I can’t, there’s so many amazing songs I listen to on a game-to-game basis. I’ll talk to you about my playlist when we done.” We were unable to speak with Durant after he was done.
Kyle Lowry — “I don’t have a fire up song, I’m always ready to go.” Hero.
