NBA All Star Saturday Night Roundup

The Rising Stars Challenge set the tone on Friday night, but everyone knows the best day of the entire All Star Weekend is Saturday. As fun as it is to watch the future of the league play at half speed, the fun events are all on Saturday night. We entered to the night with only one past winner in the field to defend his title in Devin Booker, so I was excited to see who would make a name for themselves on the biggest stage. The three point contest and the dunk contest had a couple local Hornets participating, and the three point contest was as stacked as I could remember. Would this be the year the Slam Dunk Contest finally gets back to being the best event of the night? Let’s see what happened

NBA Skills Competition

My pick before this even was De’Aaron Fox. I just felt like everything was going SAC’s way this year, and after his 16 assist performance in the Rising Stars Challenge I felt good about it. Boy was I wrong. In the first matchup we saw Nikola Jokic take down Nikola Vucecic in the Battle of Nikolas

I thought Vucevic may have a chance only because Jokic is so goddamn slow, but once things got down to the three point portion of the event, I knew it was a wrap. In the second matchup with Tatum/Conley, my biggest fear was the pass. It ended up being the reason there was a little separation between the two, but thankfully Conley still can’t shoot to save his life and Tatum as we know is automatic from essentially everywhere behind the arc.

Next up we had Fox vs Young, one of the best matchups of the early rounds in my opinion.

Here’s where the contest got a little wonky for me. Trae Young never got his pass through the station. Has this always been the rule? That no matter what you can advance? If that’s the case that is beyond stupid. You should have to complete each part in order to advance. Do you only get to take three 3PA? No. If I’m Fox I’m a little heated because for all we know Trae Young would still be trying to get his pass through. I know they want to speed up these events, but I feel like it’s pretty basic to have each participant make sure he completes each part.

Luka almost hit his half court heave, but thankfully he was able to eliminate Kuzma. Last thing I needed was more Kuzma love.

When it came time to whittle things down to a final two, we had Jokic vs Tatum and Young vs Luka. The first pairing isn’t really fair, and Tatum once again came from behind and got the job done. But the second matchup was certainly juicy. Whether they want to accept it or not, for the rest of their careers anytime we get a Luka vs Young matchup it’s going to be spicy. Luka once again had to attempt a half court heave just for a chance, but sadly Young was locked in and made his first attempt. That gave us a final I think everyone was happy about, with Tatum vs Young for all the marbles

It sure looked like a runaway win for Trae Young, hell Reggie Miller even considered things a done deal, well not so fast my friends!

What an awesome way to end it, a half court heave for the win. Sure I am extra fond of this because of who it was, but I think had anyone won the title that way it would have been awesome. Sounds like Young already wants a rematch too

All in all, I’d say for a competition that is usually pretty easy and boring, this one certainly had some awesome moments. A good way to set the stage for the rest of the night.

The Three Point Contest

In the preview blog of this event I had Joe Harris as my selection. I had nailed Devin Booker the year before, and I dunno maybe this is just one random thing I’m really good at predicting. If I wasn’t such a cheap pussy I would actually put money on this stuff but that’s a different discussion. This field was so deep with incredible shooters, I knew it was going to make for a great contest. Joe Harris got things kicked off first by putting the pressure on everyone with 25 out of the gate

That made me feel GREAT about my pick. It was a little disappointing to see Kemba only walk away with 15 points

and then Seth Curry, a guy many had as a favorite to make the finals, laid an egg as well with just 16

His teammate didn’t do much better with Dame finishing with 17, and in my opinion he’s more of an in game big momentum three point maker than a three point contest type shooter so this made sense

It made me pretty mad watching Danny Green score 23 points only because I was reminded that he was a throw in player in the Kawhi deal. His release is super quick and he’s the kind of shooter that I feel is built for a competition like this.

When it was time for Steph to unload you know he wouldn’t disappoint, and making his last 10 threes certainly fit the bill

You add in Buddy Hield’s 26, and we had our three finalists

Once we got to the Finals, I wouldn’t have blamed either Hield or Harris for being a little intimidated. I mean it’s only the best shooter of all time in Steph Curry standing in their way of a title. But as we saw Joe Harris was not phased in the slighest and put on one hell of a showing in the final round

The pressure was on Curry, and he came out firing making his first 9 threes which brought his total to 19 consecutive

but a miss from the corner ultimately gave him the loss. That may have been the surprise of the entire contest. I thought there was no way Curry was going to miss anything on that final rack and we were going to have a dramatic OT or something. But at the end of the day Joe Harris took the Mickstape boys’ advice and made all his shots, and whats do you know he walked away with the hardware.

Dunk Contest

Maybe I’m alone in this line of thinking, but for me I’m always way more impressed with a dunk contest when the dunks don’t involve tons of props. Yeah those are impressive, but give me something where it’s just the players, the ball, and creativity. I wouldn’t say this was a great dunk contest, but it did have some impressive individual dunks and the right guy won so that should be all that matters.

The first handful of dunks were decent, I thought this one by John Collins was probably the worst of the bunch and it was still pretty ridiculous

I was much more impressed with both Diallo’s and DSJ’s attempts

The problem with DSJ was he couldn’t stop missing. That dunk came on his third attempt and as we all know there is nothing worse in a dunk contest than missing 100000 times. Totally sucks the momentum out of the building. That was basically the story for Miles Bridges, a guy who I picked to win the whole thing, he just couldn’t seem to get anything to drop

but he did snag himself a 50

Then we had John Collin’s plane dunk. I get the reason behind it, but this is what I mean about all the prop stuff being annoying. I’m just personally not a fan. Like it was cool that he jumped over a toy plane you get at the dentist for being a good boy, but the dunk itself was meh at best.

One of the best dunks of the night came in DSJ’s next attempt where he dunked over J.Cole who then nearly had an impressive dunk himself

that was a clear 50 when you factor in the distance, how far he cocked that back, and the finish. Great dunk.

But up next we got the dunk that legit saved not only saved the dunk contest event, but also won Diallo the trophy. His dunk over Shaq qas simply ridiculous

Not only does he leap over Shaq, but he busts out the Vince Carter elbow in the rim tribute. Perfect idea, perfect execution, no wonder he got a perfect score. Now this contest wasn’t without drama. After missing what felt like 50,000 more attemps, DSJ finally pulled off this dunk over Wade

The judges gave that dunk a 50. That is not a 50 dunk. I imagine they did that so that Diallo would have to try in his final attempt, but I need the judges to explain that one. Given what they previously handed out 50s for, I just don’t see how that was a perfect score dunk, especially after missing a billion earlier attempts. That was kinda lame.

And to win it, Diallo kept it simple

Everyone know’s it was his Shaq dunk that got him the win, and that’s why I can say the best man won. Overall I’d give this dunk contest like a 6.5 out of 10, way too many misses for my liking. I think we all agree that the 2020 Dunk Contest with Zion is going to be so much better. I would like to start a petition to have Zion/Gordon/LaVine/Mitchell etc all participate because that may give us the best contest since 2016.

I would say the night as a whole lived up to the hype for me, each competition had some legit awesome moments and really that’s all you can ask for at All Star Weekend. We now turn our attention to the real game tonight, and I’m hoping everyone actually tries. I hate to say it, but I have a feeling Team LeBron is going to smash.