Cavaliers, Herro, and McClung Take the All-Star Saturday Night Trophies
NBA All-Star Saturday Night is not likely to ever recapture the glamour of its glory years, an era from the 1980s to the early 2000s when Pantheon members Julius Erving, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant competed against other Hall of Famers. The first official Slam Dunk Contest took place at halftime of the 1976 ABA All-Star Game, and four of the five participants became Hall of Fame inductees: Julius Erving (the winner), David Thompson, George Gervin, and Artis Gilmore (the fifth participant was Larry Kenon, who made the All-Star team five times in his ABA/NBA career). Some fans may scoff at what they consider to be the pedestrian nature of some of those 1976 dunks, but keep in mind that no one at that time was thinking about jumping over props; rest assured that Erving and Thompson--both of whom had vertical leaps in excess of 40 inches--could have done any dunk that we have seen in the "modern" era: after all, Erving did his trademark free throw line dunk in games, which is more difficult and impressive than dunking over any prop.
Now, the NBA cannot beg, borrow, or steal enough money to induce the elite players to deign to participate in what is supposed to be one of the league's showcase events.
So, we have to settle for what we can get, because there is no point to living in the past or complaining too much about the present.
The highlight of the Skills Challenge was the San Antonio Spurs team of Chris Paul and Victor Wembanyama being disqualified after trying to circumvent the rules; to shave seconds off of their time, the Spurs did not even attempt any shots during the shooting portion of the obstacle course, and just focused on the passing portion of the obstacle course, drawing boos from the crowd and a prompt disqualification from the officials. The Spurs' shenanigans are much like tanking and load management, odious practices that not only don't work but cheat the fans from seeing legit competition. You might say that what the Spurs did does not matter because few people care that much about the Skills Competition, but a major reason that people don't care about the Skills Competition--and care less about the NBA in general than they did before--is that the players' focus has shifted from trying to compete to trying to find shortcuts and excuses to not compete. Here is a novel idea: spend some time practicing the shots from the Skills Challenge--shots that could also be useful in real games--instead of trying to figure out how to win an event while exerting as little energy as possible.
Paul's career Skills Challenge resume--a record six appearances but no wins--now rivals his playoff resume, which includes the most blown 2-0 leads in NBA postseason history. Hopefully for Spurs fans, Paul is only teaching Wembanyama how to lose in the Skills Challenge and not how to lose 2-0 leads in the playoffs.
The Cleveland Cavaliers have been one of the most pleasant surprises in the NBA this season, and their team--featuring Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley--won the Skills Challenge, defeating the Bay Area's home team, the Golden State Warriors (Draymond Green and Moses Moody).
Ten of the NBA's top 25 leaders in career three point field goal percentage are active players--including future Hall of Famers Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson--but none of them participated in the Three Point Contest. Just one of the players who ranks in the top ten in three point field goal percentage this season--Cleveland's Darius Garland--participated in the Three Point Contest. In the first round, Golden State's Buddy Hield--who ranks 97th in three point field goal percentage this season, and 58th all-time--tied Stephen Curry's Three Point Contest record with 31 points. Two-time defending Three Point Contest champion Damian Lillard failed to advance. Garland and and the Miami Heat's Tyler Herro joined Hield in the final round. Herro set the bar with 24 points, Garland scored 19 points, and Hield fell just short with 23 points. This was Herro's first All-Star Weekend event win, and tomorrow he will make his first appearance in the All-Star Game (or games, depending how one prefers to describe the NBA's new format, colloquially known as the "Adam Silver begs, hopes, and pleads that at least a few NBA All-Stars will pretend to care" All-Star Game).
The Slam Dunk Contest lacked drama--the eventual winner was obvious immediately--but was yet another showcase for Mac McClung's surreal athleticism. The two-time defending Slam Dunk champion jumped over a car and executed a two-handed reverse dunk for his first dunk, setting a standard right from the jump (pun intended!) that the other competitors could not match. After McClung jumped over an assistant, grabbed the ball and did a spinning two-handed dunk for his second dunk, TNT's Kenny Smith said that the event should just be McClung doing five dunks with music playing in the background--an acknowledgment that this contest was no contest. McClung lived up to that praise by receiving a perfect score of 50 on all four of his dunks. McClung is the first "three-peat" winner in Slam Dunk Contest history. Nate Robinson is the only other three-time champion (2006, 2009, 2010).
Julius Erving--who not only won the 1976 ABA Slam Dunk Contest, but was runner
up (at age 34!) to Larry Nance in the 1984 NBA Slam Dunk
Contest--presented the Julius "Dr. J" Erving Slam Dunk Contest trophy to
McClung:
It would be interesting to see some of the NBA's All-Stars who are great leapers--Anthony Edwards comes to mind--challenge McClung, but don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
It is what it is, to borrow a (too often) used phrase, but we should not let those who did not appear cast too big of a shadow over those who did appear: congratulations to Mitchell/Mobley, Herro, and McClung for doing their best to put on a great show during All-Star Saturday night.
Labels: Cleveland Cavaliers, Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, Mac McClung, NBA All-Star Weekend, Skills Challenge, Slam Dunk Contest, Three Point Contest, Tyler Herro
posted by David Friedman @ 1:28 AM
2 Comments:
I cannot wait to read your thoughts about Big O’s response to Draymond!
Anonymous:
I posted about Draymond's All-Star Game comments in my All-Star Game recap, but I think that you are referring to when Draymond called the modern NBA "boring" and Big O retorted that the game may be boring to Draymond because all he does is pass to Stephen Curry.
Some context is important here. I believe that Draymond was echoing a comment that Kobe Bryant made many years ago when Bryant said that the modern NBA features "offense by accident," in contrast to previous eras when teams ran sets and plays. Bryant said that the NBA has devolved to a boring combination of dunks and threes with nothing in the middle--and he was right. To the extent that Draymond is agreeing with Bryant, he is also right.
However, and as I noted in my All-Star Game recap, Draymond does not have the stature to make such statements. Kobe and Big O are all-time greats who both played all-around games. Draymond is the king of the "triple single" whose career is based on basking in Curry's reflected glory. That makes it easy to dismiss anything that Draymond says, though I am surprised that Big O would take Draymond's side on this particular issue. I suspect that the Big O quote is either taken out of context, or simply reflects Big O being bewildered that anyone would ask Draymond to offer definitive opinions on such topics.
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