How a Popular Mixtape Became a Timeless NBA All-Star Game Soundtrack

The intersection of Drake, Future, LeBron, Steph, Kobe and Obama in 2016 was "a time to be alive"

In 2015, a diamond-encrusted mixtape broke the internet and heralded the short-lived prophecy of our modern golden age. Looking back, Drake and Future’s What a Time to be Alive was truly that — an apex blip of cultural enjoyment on the human timeline.

Have truer words ever been rapped in human history? Reflect back on those years, when everything in our collective society felt more manageable, more balanced: when A.I. generally referred to Allen Iverson, and not the looming extinction of your profession; when newspapers and alt-weeklies hadn’t folded right down the middle like, well, newspapers tend to do. When a global pandemic was still a half-decade away and practically no one — besides the aptly-named Future, ala Atlanta’s Rasputin, who delivered another mystically clairvoyant message with 2017’s “Mask Off” — could’ve predicted three summers of quarantine and the masks-laden distance measuring between you and the person standing in front of you at Peet’s Coffee.

From 2009 to 2017, North American life glowed in the brightest, most enjoyable lights. My people, we had it fucking good. And perhaps nowhere is that more retrospectively evident than in the National Basketball Association’s yearly convening of flashy dunks, whimsical passes and flinging longshots at the All-Star Game.

In 2016, that weekend felt especially transcendent. And yet, it doesn’t get enough love for the amount of Adam Sandler (yes, Sandler, not Silver) gems it provided. Not even Michael Jordan in his prime, captaining a Dream Team that has since ascended into the Barcelonian Mount Vesuvius of our memories could have headlined such a perfectly timed series of just-enough-action — with career-ending goodbyes, career-launching hellos, and the miscellaneous intersections of celebrity-dom and entertainment for the modern audience.

I’ll begin with “Jumpman” — the lead single off WATTBA, and a song that the NBA got behind early — which took over the world like MJ’s Chicago Bulls of the 90s did with its hoops-inspired ethos that cemented Drake and his co-star Future as the frontmen in not only North American music at the time, but in the game’s growing popularity on the international stage in front of over 18,000 fans on February 14, 2016 in Canada’s de facto capital and Drake’s very own, Toronto.

Swish.

But the Toronto All-Star Game was much more than a duo of men rapping about their infinite glory and infatuation with wealth.

2016 was the last All-Star Game that Kobe Bryant ever played in. Having announced his retirement at the start of the season, the game served as a tribute to the beloved Laker, in what would become the veteran’s coda to his teenage debut. Highlight clips show nothing but sheer gratitude and awe for our era’s greatest scorer — from players, coaches, and fans — in his last of 18 total All-Star appearances.

Of course, it wasn’t just him scoring the rock, as citizens had grown numbly accustomed to (see: his 81 point deluge in Toronto, 10 years prior). This was far more than that. I don’t want to minimize this as one athlete’s swansong performance. It was more like watching a global idol’s journey come to a crescendoing finish on live television, while he was still on the job. Watch these clips. You’ll see a barely-emerging Giannis goofing around with the old man; you’ll see good friends in LeBron James and Dwayne Wade jabbing at their alpha; you’ll see an overly energetic Russell Westbrook dancing around his hero. The way every hooper gravitated towards Kobe with adoration extended beyond the baseline, and entered a kind of genuine, giddy joy among grown men we rarely get to embrace as public spectators. 

In the world of competitive basketball, though, it also represented a crucial shift — when we witnessed the baton-passing of leadership in the league, and the door suddenly opened for others to flourish. The 2016 ASG was the end of something great, and the beginning of something potentially greater, as Curry and Klay evolved into their next-level-selves (who, at that point, only shared a combined 5 All-Star nods and one Larry O’Brien trophy), Kawhi “HaHaHa” Leonard made his All-Star debut as a fresh-faced San Antonio Spur, as did Draymond Green who was still a lovably aggressive character but hadn’t yet devolved into a nut-kicking goon, and Jimmy Butler of the Chicago Bulls made his sophomore appearances.

Meanwhile, you still had Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Paul Gasol, Paul Millsap and others — including Kobe and D-Wade — who were still inexplicably balling out, but ushering in the next crop of stars while slowly becoming the aged-out sagely mentors of yesteryear. In 2024, we are going through another generational change of guard with the rise of current All-Stars like Luka Dončić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (drafted in 2018), Anthony Edward, Tyrese Haliburton, and Tyrese Maxey (drafted in 2020), Paolo Banchero (drafted in 2022) and soon, Victor Wembanyama (drafted in 2023) — who’ve all ascended in a post-Kobe, COVID-bound world.

Bryant ended up posting 10 points, six rebounds, and seven assists, and exited the game to a roaring crowd. We were all aware he would soon retire, but had no foresight that so much more would be lost.

This story isn’t only about basketball. Another layer to this particular exhibition — in looking back — is that it was also a changing of the guard on a more important scale: the United States’ presidency. It would be the last time that President Barack Obama would preside as a feel-good, basketball-obsessed Commander-in-Chief. Though he didn’t attend the All-Star game, it’s well-documented that Obama is an avid hooper, a fan, and vocal supporter of NBA icons like Kobe, Bron, and Steph (dare I say a friend?). No other president has a YouTube video of his own basketball highlights. And for me, as a millennial Mexican American, I felt a genuine sense of joy and comfort in seeing a young, Black President who equally loved the game I did.

If you were breathing and alive back in 2016, you don’t need me to remind you how different the air tasted in our mouths when he was inside the oval office. Say what you will about Obama being an imperfect imperialist — I won’t disagree. But look me in the eyes and tell me that the cultural atmosphere of our nation didn’t feel significantly less violent, less abrasive, less murderous in our day-to-day interactions when Barack was running the point. Instead, a few months after this NBA ASG, Trumpito would be elected and would take his seat. We know the rest.

Obama meant so much to the game and to the players that two years after the 2016 All-Star Game, when the Golden State Warriors claimed their third championship in 2018, the whole team would skip a visit to the actual White House with Elote Head in office, and would instead visit the then-retired-prez Obama, in his personal office, before their game versus the Washington Wizards.

2016 offered more than just great basketball — it offered a much healthier and happier reality, especially for communities of color that I often revisit through music and highlight tapes of the day.

You have the actual NBA’s worthwhile storylines, too: LeBron’s Cavs at their peak versus Steph’s Warriors; KD still playing alongside his brother, Westbrook, in OKC; Isaiah Thomas, before getting his tooth knocked out, leading the Celtics to the Eastern Conference Finals and averaging nearly 29 points per contest. In more ways than one, that random night in 2016 was a game of lasts. That summer, Durant would leave behind his longtime buddy in Oklahoma to join a dynasty in Oakland, and NBA discourse would never be the same. A couple of seasons after, LBJ would bounce Cleveland to become a Laker in Los Angeles, eventually joined by The Brow. Hell, Chris Paul was still a Los Angeles Clipper in 2016. And our remembrance of that prior era should not be so easily discarded as hoop heads.

Don’t even get me started on the rest of the game’s best moments, when D-Wade tossed it up to his former South Beach homie for a nasty oop; when an unbreakable, downhill Westbrook — the game’s MVP — yammed it off a too-high pass from Durant; when a fully-healthy Klay smiled his awkward smile and shot his beautiful shot; when Kobe attempted his immortal fadeaway jumper and it almost spun itself out of the rim’s vortex before the fate of gravity pulled it down through the nylon; when Melo was still an iso-machine for the Knicks. And remember Indiana’s Paul George and Sacramento’s DeMarcus Cousins? How they were both touted as franchise saviors?

And then you had all the random tidbits in-between that every All-Star game provides: CP3’s trick passes to a high-reaching Pelican, Anthony Davis; Andre Drummond standing in a corner; John Wall’s running between-the-legs backwards assist to a running windmill-LeBron Dunkman. Tell me: what more could you ask for to feed the modern NBA addict? 

Are you even an NBA head if these names and combinations don’t evoke some tingle of cultural fantasy, athletic possibility, and electric overload that just doesn’t feel quite the same in a growingly-apathetic 2024? It’s no surprise that the evening ended in the 2nd-highest scoring game in NBA All-Star history, and the highest single-team output (the West scored 196 points) — ever.

All I’m saying is this: when someone asks me what my favorite basketball game is, I have to pause and deeply consider what I would say. But the 2016 ASG might be my darkhorse pick. Because I’m not sure there’s ever been a game where so many storyline moments swirled together (I almost forgot to mention it was also the same weekend when Aaron Gordon and Zach LaVine blew the lid off our stratosphere with their life-defying Dunk Contest).

Don’t get it twisted — not everything has changed since then, and that there is still much to appreciate about today’s beautifully evolving game. You still have LBJ and SC30 balling out of their brains. You’ve got Giannis as a stronger, bigger, faster version of himself. CP3 is still somehow around, lurking along the San Francisco Bay’s shoreline, and his now-former teammate, Devin Booker (who was only a rookie in 2016 but debuted in the Rising Stars event and announced his arrival with 23 coins — yes, coins — scored) has taken the reins as the oldest remaining Phoenix Sun. And can you imagine if Chet and Wemby maintain their gangly health and go head-to-head at ASG ‘26 inside Steve Ballmer’s still-veiled Intuit Dome in Inglewood? The future isn’t doomed, after all.

Still, I don’t know if we will ever go back to what the 2016 All-Star game represented about our former reality. We never know what we’ll lose, who will get their due contract extension, which player might be derailed by injury, which teammates will remain together and for how long. 

So, say it again with me, one more time for those in the nosebleeds, who undoubtedly know what I’m talking about, and who surely felt the timeless energy of it all unfolding in front of them: 2016 was, in fact, a time to be alive.