This year’s NBA All-Star Saturday night was definitely a night to remember, as it featured a hefty portion of the events that are presented during this annual weekend-long showcase. The Skills Challenge, 3-Point Contest, Steph vs Sabrina 3-Point Contest, and Slam Dunk Contest were featured on the marquee, and they surely delivered.
The main event of the weekend, the NBA All-Star Game, will be held tomorrow as the weekend’s culmination, but before that, read more below for a brief rundown on what transpired during the first half of the NBA’s annual showcase.
Skills Challenge
The Pacers’ hometown trio of Tyrese Haliburton, Bennedict Mathurin, and Myles Turner got it done and beat Team All-Stars (Trae Young, Scottie Barnes, and Tyrese Maxey) and Team Top Picks (Paolo Banchero, Anthony Edwards, and Victor Wembanyama) to win the perplexing Skills Challenge.
The contest was a weird one, to say the least. The Pacers trio came out swinging and won the Team Relay round. The beautiful, futuristic court was filled with wacky obstacles that players had to maneuver around.
Myles Turner and Bennedict Mathurin both flew across the court and overcame the obstacles with ease, which built up Haliburton’s run, where he glided around the obstacles and finished his run with a between-the-legs alley-oop dunk he could only dream of doing in a legit NBA match.
Now, I’m not sure if it’s just this SBOTOP writer was the only one who got confused by the passing event, but it sure was a lot to digest. All three players were on the floor at the same time while simultaneously hitting the targets with a plethora of passes. The event ended before I had the chance to figure out what was going on.
The last event in the skills challenge was the shooting challenge, where the All-Star team of Trae Young, Scottie Barnes, and Tyrese Maxey came out scorching and drained 33 points by shooting from certain spots on the floor.
After the three events, the Pacers Trio and Team All-Stars were tied, forcing a half-court shot challenge to decide the contest
It took Team All-Stars almost 59 seconds to drain a half-court shot, while the Pacers’ Haliburton sank one with 20.5 seconds to spare, crowning Team Pacers the Skills Challenge champions.
3-Point Contest
Next up was another crowd favourite, the 3-point contest. It was the most stacked contest of the entire night, as it featured Damian Lillard, Jalen Brunson, Tyrese Haliburton, Lauri Markkanen, Malik Beasley, Donovan Mitchell, Trae Young, and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Unlike the Skills Challenge, the 3-point contest somewhat remained the same format as it has been since time immemorial: four racks with four regulation balls and one money ball on each spread across the arc, with the inclusion of one all-money ball rack. But this year, the league added a minor twist to the contest, adding two “Starry” balls placed 30 feet from the hoop. Each starry ball drained will garner the player three points.
Trae Young started the competition off and left the bar high for his adversaries to overcome. Young scored 26 points in the opening round, tied with Haliburton, Towns, and defending 3-point champion Damian Lillard.
The contest proceeded to a tiebreaker round between the four players who were tied with 26 points. The contestants were to shoot as many balls as possible in 30 seconds, and three of the contestants with the highest tallied points will compete in the final round.
Haliburton only tallied 12 points in the tiebreaker round and failed to compete continue in the competition.
In the final round, KAT and Young both scored 24 points, finding themselves in another potential tiebreaker round. But Damian Lillard had other things in mind.
The defending champion already tallied 24 points, with one more rack remaining in his run. It looked like some of the jitters of the All-Star weekend got in the veteran’s head as he proceeded to miss every ball in the last rack to cement his win—all but the last one, at least.
The entire basketball world waited until Dame shot the very last ball of the very last rack to crown him his back-to-back 3-point contest title. It was Dame Time in Indiana, and it was glorious.
Steph vs Sabrina 3-Point Challenge
The Steph vs Sabrina 3-Point Challenge, a first-of-its-kind event, headlined NBA 2024 news stories as the new addition to the All-Star weekend programme featured two of the best shooters alive going head-to-head for the 3-point crown. The rules are pretty much the same as with the 3-point contest that just transpired, but this time, it’s only between Sabrina Ionescu and Stephen Curry.
Ionescu opened up the contest with a hot start, sinking almost every ball up until the third rack, where she started to show signs of fatigue. But she still ended her round with an impressive 26 points.
Now it was the greatest shooter of all time’s turn. As Kenny “the Jet” Smith said on commentary, “You know what? 26 is a good number (pertaining to Sabrina’s score), but it’s not a Steph number. Steph is in a different stratosphere.
Lo and behold, Steph Curry, with ease, drained in 29 points, the most any shooter (including the prior 3-point contest) had put up in the evening.
Now, the greatest shooter on the planet adds another piece of hardware to his trophy cabinet, this time a 3-point championship belt.
Slam Dunk Contest
The much-loved Slam Dunk Contest consisted of defending champion Mac McClung, Boston’s Jaylen Brown, Miami’s Jaime Jaquez Jr., and New York’s Jacob Toppin.
The contest, as it constantly does, showcased superhuman athleticism, artistry, and bursts of high-octane performances.
Mac McClung has swept the competition since the first round of dunks, but his title reign looked like it was in jeopardy after some unkind scoring by the judges. The G League star showed the most athleticism and creativity among the pool of dunkers, thanks to his robotic vertical and the tenacity with which he finishes. He unsurprisingly won the contest, and a second straight Slam Dunk Contest is very much deserved.
The other dunkers showed some sparks as well. Jacob Toppin and Jaime Jaquez Jr. showed powerful stuff, and it looked like one of them would reach the final, but in the end, it was Jaylen Brown who faced McClung for the title.
The Boston Celtics are the NBA 2024 odds favourites to win the league this year, but unfortunately, the odds were stacked against Brown in the finals, as McClung boasted two athletic, powerful, and creative dunks to lift the trophy after it’s all said and done.
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