LOS ANGELES -- The NBA All-Star game will be held in Los Angeles in 2004, the first time basketball's showcase event will be played in the area in 21 years.

``The NBA is pleased to bring our premiere basketball event to Los Angeles. There will be an extraordinary array of celebrities involved as well as the All-Stars,'' Commissioner David Stern said at a news conference Friday.

The game will be at Staples Center, where the Los Angeles Lakers are playing the New Jersey Nets in the NBA Finals.

The league's Los Angeles Clippers, the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks and the NHL's Los Angeles Kings also play home games at the arena.

The last NBA All-Star game in Los Angeles was played at the Forum in Inglewood in 1983, when the East beat the West 132-123 and Julius Erving of the Philadelphia 76ers was the MVP.

The 2004 All-Star activities the weekend of Feb. 13-15 will climax with the annual game between the best players from the Eastern Conference against the best of the Western Conference.

Built in 1999, Staples Center earlier this year was the site of the NHL All-Star game and the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. It also played host to the 2000 Democratic National Convention and the Grammy Awards.

``We wanted David to experience Los Angeles in a month other than June, so we're bringing him back in February,'' Staples Center president Tim Leiweke said, alluding to the fact that the Lakers are playing their third consecutive NBA Finals.

``As a student of the NBA, I can now say that our arena's roster of world-class events is now complete with the addition of this very extraordinary weekend of sports and entertainment,'' Leiweke said.

George Kirkland, president of the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the All-Star game should bring Los Angeles an extra 20,000 ``room nights'' -- a reference to hotel bookings. He said the NBA All-Star game in Philadelphia this season had an estimated financial impact of $50 million on that city.

That might be a conservative estimate for Los Angeles, Kirkland said.