The Hawks won't be completely shut out of the festivities on All Star Saturday night as Al Horford will be leading Team Atlanta in the Haier Shooting Stars Competition. Horford will be joined by former Georgia Bulldog and current Atlanta Dream guard Coco Miller and current NBA TV analyst and former Atlanta Hawks guard Steve Smith.
Team Atlanta will face teams from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Texas.
Team Los Angeles won the inaugural shooting stars event back in 2004. This year's team will be made up of Lakers forward Pau Gasol, all time WNBA leading scorer Tina Thompson, and NBA TV analyst and former Laker Rick Fox.
Taj Gibson will lead Team Chicago along with Chicago Sky forward Cathrine Kraayveld. They will be joined by TNT NBA Analyst and five-time world champion Steve Kerr.
Team Texas is the defending champion and this years team will be made up of Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki, San Antonio Silver Stars' Roneeka Hodges, and TNT analyst Kenny Smith. Hodges will replace Becky Hammon who was key in last year's win for Team Texas.
For those not familiar with the competition here is an outline of the competition from the NBA's official release.
The Haier Shooting Stars contest features one current NBA player, one current WNBA player and one TNT on-air talent and legend on each team.
There are six numbered shooting locations of increasing difficulty, with each team attempting to make all shots in numeric order in the fastest time. Each team will select a specific player rotation to follow throughout the competition. Each shot must be made before the next player begins shooting in succession. Teams have up to two minutes to complete the entire shooting course and the team that completes all six shots in the least amount of time is declared the winner. In the case of a tie, a shoot-off will be used to determine the winner.
Team Atlanta participated in last years competition with Joe Johnson, Dream forward Angel McCoughtry, and Steve Smith taking their shots in the competition.