Before the All-Star game kicks off Sunday night, the NBA treated us to three events in the leadup to Team LeBron(aka Team Tamper) vs. Team Giannis in Charlotte, North Carolina. Normally, the Slam Dunk contest is the one event capable of stealing the night - and even the weekend in some cases.
It's really an accurate reflection of the times we're in that the greatest collection of overall talent was in the three-point shootout. We got to see guys at the level of Steph Curry, Devin Booker, Kemba Walker, Damian Lillard, and Dirk Nowitzki fire away for the three-point title....only it was an under-the-radar role player who ended up stealing the night. The dunk contest, on the other hand, felt like our annual battle between no-name players with mad hops, except this year we weren't gifted with a Zach Lavine-Aaron Gordon clash of the high-flying titans. Tonight's dunk contest winner did execute a truly mind-blowing dunk that I don't think anybody had ever seen before. Take a look at the event recaps below, and my one suggestion for improvement.
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Skills Challenge
The Taco Bell Skills Challenge is the most notoriously forgettable event of the evening - which is why it leads off All Star Saturday Night. It's essentially a series of tasks that players have to complete that come straight from the practice facility. You dribble around pylons, toss a chest pass through a hoop, make a layup, and nail a three before your opponent does. The Skills challenge is the one event I'd scrap entirely if I was made commissioner. You can find an alternative that I proposed at the bottom of the page.
Celtic golden boy Jayson Tatum won the most forgettable event of the night, but the way he claimed the title was anything but. Trae Young and Tatum were the finalists in a pool of eight versatile guards and bigs, and they were neck and neck up until the very last sequence. Trae Young broke ahead and sprinted to the three-point line for a free pull up jumper ahead of Tatum. He threw up this smooth j that had every right to go in and win him the Skills Challenge - but before he hit net Tatum heaved a half-court prayer that splashed before Trae's!!! Jayson claimed the Skills Challenge off an improbable Hail Mary over the favored Trae Young.
Take a look at the highlights below:
Three-Point Contest
Contrary to the Skills Challenge, the three-point contest was entertaining from start to finish and carried actual weight! It was a stacked field of competition: Devin Booker, Steph Curry, Seth Curry, Joe Harris, Buddy Hield, Damian Lillard, Dirk Nowitzki, Danny Green, Khris Middleton, and Kemba Walker. All deadeye shooters, heat-check extraordinaires!
Out of the stacked field, only Hield, Curry, and Joe Harris advanced with 25+ point high scores. Last year's champion Devin Booker arguably shot lights out, making his last five shots in a row, but it barely wasn't enough to eclipse the top three marks. Steph wowed his hometown Charlotte crowd by making his last ten threes in a row for the top first round score, 27! A clear showing of skill by the greatest shooter this generation, and a reminder of why his deadliness from three has totally changed the game of NBA basketball. Why were we even surprised he hit ten in a row?
Joe Harris led things off in the final round with a scorching 26-point showing, an equal follow-up to his red-hot first round. Usually, guys will run out of gas in the second if they throw up a great first round, but Brooklyn's Joe Harris beat the odds.
Hield had a poor start that he never recovered from, so it was up to the greatest shooter in history to beat Joe Harris' 26 and claim the crown. He made his first nine shots in a row to kick off the championship round, it looked like he was going to pull off a miracle! Unfortunately, Curry went cold in the middle racks and missed Joe's score by a measly two points. Joe Harris was our 2019 NBA three-point champion, beating out Steph Curry in the process!
They have the three-point contest down pat in terms of the event structure. There isn't anything I'd change about it, and the satisfying product we got tonight is a testament to that.
Slam Dunk Contest
Onto the most traditioanlly hyped event of the night: The Slam Dunk Contest. People understandably harp on the fact that the dunk contest just isn't what it used to be. Gone are the days of superstars like Jordan, Dominique, and Spudd Webb laying it all on the line in the contest that's the culmination of one of the game's most exciting acts. The first thing I'd change about the dunk contest is just to demand that we see star players compete in it every year.
Can we just get a freakin' dunk contest with LeBron, Westbrook, Giannis, Paul George, Ben Simmons, any other other star-level high flyers? Every once in a while you get lucky like we did with Zach LaVine vs. Aaron Gordon, but for the most part the dunk contest would be way more worth our time if we had our stars duking it out.
Tonight we got to see dunks from players high in athleticism, but low in name-value: Dennis Smith Jr., Miles Bridges, John Collins, and Hamidou Diallo. Many people had their money on the Hornet's Miles Bridges to take the competition in front of the Charlotte home crowd.
Miles Bridges flubbed his first dunk, and never recovered from that. First round highlights included Hamidou Diallo leapfrogging Shaq for a honey-dip dunk that was undoubtedly the jam of the night! Another highlight for ironic reasons was John Collins' prop-heavy Wright brothers tribute dunk, where he brought out five dudes dressed like pilots and a model of an airplane prototype. Collins brought out the airplane to jump over it....but he knocked off part of the model in the act of elevating for the dunk! You don't see a guy mess up like that too often, so you have to cherish those opportunities when they come.
The finals came down to Dennis Smith Jr. vs. Hamidou Diallo. Smith tried executing some incredibly difficult dunks but he just couldn't nail them. He ended up getting a minimum score in the first part of the finals. Hamidou slammed home some high-flying, but safe dunks to take the 2019 NBA Dunk contest. The real highlight of the night was Diallo's god-like first round honey-dip dunk over the 7'2 Shaquille O'Neal. Never have I seen someone that tall get leapfrogged in the Slam Dunk contest.
Diallo was the clear-cut winner tonight. It's a shame Dennis Smith Jr. couldn't make the finals competitive by nailing those epic dunk attempts. The final was a one-sided victory by Diallo, and he didn't try to show out on his final attempts in an effort to protect his lead.
One Suggestion For Improvement:
1-on-1 or 2-on-2 tournament instead of the Skills Challenge
I'd like the NBA to think of a way to spice up the Skills challenge, or maybe just scrap it entirely for something truly entertaining. This might not be the most time-efficient idea, but what if we had a one-on-one competition during All-Star Saturday? Can you imagine the hype around that? There'd be an actual way to settle age-old barbershop and Twitter arguments using the stage of All-Star weekend.
I mean, you could probably make the sub-event as long as you want. People would tune into the whole program to watch mano-a-mano faceoffs like Paul George against LeBron, Kyrie Irving against Curry, and Giannis vs. Durant. You might get another instance like the dunk contest, where star players don't want to participate for one reason or another.....but I feel like the first year would bring out the talent.
There are some wrinkles you'd definitely have to iron out, like what to do if a point guard gets matched up with a center. A big man might just be able to back down a little guy all the way to the hoop for an easy bucket, which would make it a boring affair. An alternative to that would be to have like a 2-on-2 competition instead. Teams could be one guard and one forward. No matter how long the event would take, I think people would still tune in to see the leagues best go at it in a 2-on-2 tournament for All Star weekend bragging rights. Don't forget, players choosing to pair up with certain players would generate conversation in itself. Like I think this year LeBron totally would've considered pairing up with his old running mate Kyrie Irving given the two's recent warmth toward each other. Can you imagine the buzz that'd generate in the leadup alone?
That's just my two cents. How would you improve All-Star Saturday/All-Star weekend?
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