Klay Thompson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Kevin Hart May Have Given us the Best All-Star Saturday of All Time
As the NFL considers completely cancelling the Pro Bowl, the NBA’s All-Star Weekend has reached an all-time high. I swear it gets better and better every year.
The NBA went ahead and cut the Shooting Star Challenge from the Saturday Night lineup, as it always made for a lackluster beginning to the night. Instead, they kicked things off with the Skills Challenge. Only this year, there was a little twist—the league sprinkled big men amongst the guards in a measure of passing, dribbling, and shooting.
The centers had their own bracket, the guards had theirs, and Karl-Anthony Towns and Isaiah Thomas met up in the final round—and Towns won in the upset of the year thus far.
The three-point contest was even more exciting. With half of the Golden State Warriors roster in the competition, we knew it would be a good one, and sure enough, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson ended up in the finals.
Curry, doing what he does best, posted a solid 23. He wasn’t ready for what Thompson had planned, though.
Thompson hit eight shots in a row twice in his final round, finishing 19-of-25 in the round to take home the trophy. He may have actually burnt the net. Klay shot 74 percent in the contest as a whole.
74 PERCENT.
Warrior teammate Draymond Green didn’t have the best night, however. Shooting 42 percent from beyond the arc and putting up straight triple-doubles was more than enough to get the Green into the contests, but he was knocked out in the of the Skills Contest and had a disappointing showing in the three-point contest.
That wasn’t the end of the world, though. The real low-point of the night for Draymond (and the high-point for literally everyone else) was when Kevin Hart decided to try his hand at shooting threes….and tied Draymond’s score.
The fans went crazy, the players were stunned, and Draymond couldn’t do much but laugh it off.
Take notes, NFL. That’s how you hype up an All-Star Game.