NBA Celebrity All-Star Game 2017: Final Score, Highlights and Comments

Brandon Armstrong, a former NBA player who impersonates current ones on YouTube, finished with 16 points and 15 rebounds in the 2017 NBA Celebrity All-Star Game as he and Win Butler of Arcade Fire (22 points and 11 boards) led the East to a dominant 88-59 win over the West in New Orleans on Friday night.

Romeo Miller (formerly known as Lil' Romeo) led the West with 18 points.    

The contest was not for the faint of heart this year, as it featured many air balls, cherry-picking players, missile passes out of bounds that may have harmed a fan or two at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and lazy transition defense.

In other words, it wasn't that much different than a pickup game at the YMCA.

But Y pickup games aren't more entertaining than the Celebrity Game, which still had its moments.

Highlights and Comments

Derek Farnsworth of RotoGrinders summed up the quality of play perfectly early in the contest:

But there were some highlights.

Oftentimes, a player will try to miss a free throw in order to grab a rebound and put it back for a layup, but how often does that work?

Romeo Miller pulled it off—in the first quarter—with an underhanded free throw and a putback that worked perfectly. No one saw it coming.

Later in the first, Baron Davis swatted Nick Cannon's layup attempt to the Gulf of Mexico:

In the second quarter, 59-year-old Oscar Schmidt, who played 30 years of professional basketball for teams in Brazil and Europe, drilled a sharp jumper from the top of the key.

Jason Williams and Brandon Armstrong completed an off-the-backboard alley-oop, but it was just after the halftime buzzer:

At the break, lead singer Win Butler, the Andre Drummond of the Celebrity Game, led all players with 12 points and seven rebounds. He was simply too much for the West team to handle down low and on the glass, especially on the offensive boards.

Despite 11 points and four boards in the first half from West point guard Romeo Miller, the East led 39-23 after a second-quarter surge. That will happen when the other team goes 2-of-15 from three-point range.

Early in the third quarter, a Miller air ball and a mannequin challenge helped kick things off:

But the rest of the game was much like the first, with Butler continuing to dominate the glass and Armstrong doing his James Harden impersonation and getting away with nearly six steps:

The East led 59-42 after three quarters and kept its foot on the gas in the fourth quarter, outscoring the West 29-17.

The highlight of the final frame (and the game) was New Orleans Saints superfan Jarrius Robertson. The 14-year-old, who was diagnosed with a chronic liver disease, was able to get on the court and hit a baseline bucket for the East:

He was the real MVP of the night, with all due respect to Armstrong.