The NBA is still in ready, steady mode for the 2012 All-Star Game next week in Orlando, but with no lockout in sight has unveiled the location of its 2013 All-Star Game: Houston.

The 62nd NBA All-Star Game is scheduled to be played on Sunday, Feb. 17, 2013 at the Toyota Center, which will also host the NBA Rising Stars Challenge and NBA All-Star Saturday Night presented by State Farm.

NBA All-Star Jam Session will be held at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

The league has put Houston into a short rotation. The 2013 game will mark the third NBA All-Star celebration in Houston, most recently in 2006, as well as 1989.

The NBA also held its All-Star Game in Texas in 2010 when it was played in Cowboys Stadium.

There is strong speculation that the 2014 All-Star Game could be played in Brooklyn, NY, at Barclays Center, scheduled to open as the new home of the Nets, which will relocate there from New Jersey, for the 2012-13 season.

“We are in the big event business, and the All-Star Game certainly would be classified as a big event,” Brett Yormark, CEO of Nets Basketball and president and CEO of Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment, recently told Big Lead Sports. “Our goal is to be aggressive to host every big event that we can.”

Madison Square Garden, the Manhattan-based home of the New York Knicks, could also be at the top of the NBA’s list for an upcoming All-Star Game. The self-proclaimed “World’s Most Famous Arena” currently is undergoing an $850 million renovation, which is scheduled to be completed later this year. The last time New York hosted an NBA All-Star Game was 1998 at The Garden.

One major factor that the NBA could see as being either an advantage or an obstacle to playing its 2014 All-Star Game in Brooklyn or Manhattan: Super Bowl XLVIII will be played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, on Feb. 2, 2014.

The NBA might elect to take advantage of the global attention that will be focused on the area and set up All-Star Game shop there just two weeks later. Or the NBA might not want to follow in the wake of what could arguably be the biggest worldwide media tsunami in Super Bowl history and push back a Brooklyn-Manhattan game until 2015.

If New York is bypassed in 2014, Oklahoma City would also like to be named for an upcoming All-Star Game, being just one of five current NBA cities that have not yet hosted the event. The others are Memphis, Portland, Sacramento and Toronto.

Meanwhile, back in Texas: “Houston is a spectacular sports city, and for one week it will be the basketball capital of the world,” NBA Commissioner David Stern said during a press conference in Houston on Feb. 8. “NBA All-Star is a magnificent celebration of our game, and I want to thank the city and the Rockets for welcoming us once again.”

The 2013 game will mark the 29th year that Turner Sports will provide NBA All-Star coverage, and the 11th consecutive year the All-Star Game will be televised in primetime on TNT. The All-Star Game will be seen by a worldwide television audience in more than 200 countries and territories and in more than 40 languages.

“I am thrilled the Rockets and the City of Houston have once again brought NBA All-Star to Toyota Center,” Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander said during the press conference. “The All-Star Game showcases the best basketball players in the world and will allow our great Rockets fans and the entire community the opportunity to once again experience the best that our league has to offer.”

Alexander called the 2006 All-Star Game in Houston a “tremendous success, and we plan to set the bar even higher in 2013. We take great pride in Toyota Center’s standing as one of the premier venues in the country and are honored to be the first arena in Texas to host the game for a second time.”