Skip to main content

NBA All-Star Saturday Night: Five Biggest Winners


 

Giannis Antetokounmpo treated the NBA Skills Challenge like it was the NBA Finals, Cole Anthony dunked in Timberlands and more takeaways from Saturday's festivities.


While they did not get the outcome they wanted, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Cole Anthony put on a show in Cleveland. Here are the biggest winners of the night. 


1. Giannis Antetokounmpo

Nobody has ever approached the Skills Challenge like Giannis Antetokounmpo, a reigning Finals MVP who really had no business participating and behaved like his life depended on the outcome.


Giannis only finished with eight points in the Team Shooting portion, but what’s more significant than that score (which isn’t very good) is how this man treated a meaningless event he’s immeasurably overqualified for like it was the NBA Finals. Giannis sprinted through the exercise after opening it up by drilling a 5-pointer.


When the Antetokounmpo Brothers were victorious in the passing round, Giannis acted like the Bucks just advanced in the playoffs. He then struggled in the relay but, again, attacked it with maniacial intensity. Even though he lost, Giannis’s care factor made a confusing, ridiculous spectacle more entertaining than it had any right to be. He was legitimately upset when he got eliminated. Heroic!


(Also, during the dunk contest, Giannis was everybody’s number one hype man. Bless his heart.)


2. Evan Mobley



He won the Skills Challenge by flicking in a half-court shot on his first try. He’s also, according to Cavs point guard Darius Garland, “literally a unicorn”, which, hard to argue!


3. Karl-Anthony Towns



His case for the best shooting big man of all time took a boost it didn’t really need tonight. First, Towns finished with 22 points in Round 1 of the three-point contest, tying him with Trae Young, sending him to the final round with Luke Kennard. Then, a few minutes later, Towns dropped an absurd 29—the highest score in the last round…ever—and became the only center in NBA history to win the three-point contest. (Dirk Nowitzki is the only player taller than Towns to win.)


Towns was also the only contestant who didn’t really have to bend his knees when he let every shot go. Nobody makes swishing threes look easier than Towns.


How anyone performs on All-Star Saturday night has no bearing on whether they’ll qualify for an All-NBA team. But this was a good reminder of how incredible KAT has been all year. Behind Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid, no big man has been better this season.


4. DJ Khaled



They said he’d never perform at All-Star Weekend. But this was his third performance at All-Star Weekend. And for it, Khaled brought Mary J. Blige, Ludacris, Lil Wayne, Migos, Gunna and Lil Baby to the same stage. All this man does is win. Don’t hate. Be great.


5. Timbs


We’re trying to be positive here. This is a winner’s column. But even though Obi Toppin won the worst slam dunk contest in years by converting a weird between-the-legs layup type of thing, let’s go in a different direction: I don’t care what anyone says, Cole Anthony was robbed in the first round. Wearing tightly laced Timberlands in a Greg Anthony Knicks jersey, he snatched the ball out of his father’s hand and threw down a thunderous windmill. Unfortunately, the judges didn’t appreciate the dunk’s immense degree of difficulty and Cole didn’t advance past the first round. This was a travesty of the highest order. 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Klay Thompson to sit out Warriors preseason games in Japan as Kerr says he needs more time to ramp-up

  Klay Thompson may have returned healthy to the Golden State Warriors last season, but the scars from his two missed seasons are still quite visible. The Warriors played their first of two preseason games against the Washington Wizards on Friday and will play another on Sunday, but Warriors coach Steve Kerr said that Thompson will not be playing at all during the trip to Japan. "Just feel more comfortable giving him a little more of a ramp up," Kerr said before Friday's victory over Washington. "He's just not quite ready to play at this point just based on where, you know, we're so early in camp. We just want to be safe and make sure he gets a good ramp-up before he plays in games." Typically, so little time to ramp up wouldn't be a problem for a veteran in a preseason context. The games tend to be so low-impact and demand so few minutes out of a team's best players that they can safely jog through them. Stephen Curry and Draymond Green played 1...
Post a Comment
Read more

Shaquille O'Neal says Dennis Rodman was his worst teammate: 'He was a great player, but he made it hard'

  Shaquille O'Neal played for six franchises over a 20-year NBA career. That's a lot of teammates. Speaking on The Big Podcast with Shaq, the four-time champion and Hall of Famer revealed which one of those teammates was the worst.  "Worst teammate? Dennis Rodman," O'Neal said. "He was a great player, but he made it hard. Like when you try to corral the guys together and the people above you [are] letting this one guy do whatever he wants. So we had to be there an hour before the game. He'd come in fifteen minutes before the game eating chicken and rice. While the coaches are talking, he would jump in the shower. Cold shower. Come and give you 15-20 rebounds." O'Neal played with some characters in his time. We know about his beef with Kobe Bryant, who we know wasn't always the easiest teammate to get along with, though Shaq has long expressed regret over the way he and Bryant handled their relationship as young superstars, and eventually, he ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kevin Durant injury update: Nets rule star out for home-and-home vs. Raptors, hopeful for return later in week

Brooklyn Nets star forward Kevin Durant is expected to return to the floor this upcoming week. Head coach Steve Nash says it just won't be against the Raptors, either Monday or Tuesday night in the team's home-and-home against Toronto. Durant has started doing more on-court work recently as he recovers from the sprained MCL he suffered in his left knee last month, and Nash is optimistic about his prognosis moving forward. The former MVP will not play on Monday night against the Toronto Raptors, however.  "I think with Kevin he's been a great healer throughout his career," Nash said Saturday. "So the No. 1 thing is to get him back healthy and feeling secure in his health and his body so he can move and be free. When he's back, obviously he adds a ton to our team on both ends of the floor ... one of the greatest scorers of all time. And we also know he helps us defensively; he gives us more size and length. So he's a big miss for us, and whenever he get...
Post a Comment
Read more