Rising Stars Game: This was honestly the most exciting part of the weekend.  These young guys put on a show, maybe not on the defensive front, but it was quite the offensive bout.  At one point, the game became a dunk contest with everyone trying to show off their high flying skills.  Team World came away victorious 155-124 with Kings Bogdan Bogdanovic being named MVP after knocking down SEVEN 3’s! Jaylen Brown led Team USA with 35 points.  Here are just some of the highlights from the game.

Skills Contest: Did Joel Embiid cheat?  According to the official rules, no, but it definitely looked like it.  Bigs have won this competition for this past couple of years so all eyes were on the big guys final heat which matched up Joel Embiid against Bulls’ rookie Lauri Markkanen. During the passing section of the competition, Embiid did it get any passes into the ring so he just moved on to the next event.  While that appeared to be cheating, according to the rules, contestants are allowed to move on to the next event.  The rules state that a player only has to exhaust an entire rack, not that he has to make a pass into the ring. It did not matter, however, because Nets’ rising star Spencer Dinwiddie won the event for the guards.

Dunk Contest: Give it up to rookie Donovan Mitchell who introduced himself to everyone this weekend.  Mitchell won the contest after three insane dunks, including jumping over Kevin Hart and impersonating the dunk king himself, Vince Carter.  It was his first dunk, that included throwing the ball off of a second hoop to himself, that got the building roaring in excitement.  While Mitchell was electric, the best dunk of the night came courtesy of the newest member of the Cavs, Larry Nance Jr..    Nance’s father, Larry Nance Sr., was the winner of the first ever NBA dunk contest so of course his son had to pay tribute.  Switching into his dad’s old uniform, Nance elevated and hit the rock-the-cradle dunk his dad performed years ago.  It was quite a moment, especially with the internet who put father and son’s dunks side by side for comparison. It was definitely one of the best moments of the entire weekend.

It was not even Nance Jr.’s best dunk of the night.  For his final dunk, Nance tapped the ball off the backboard to himself.  Afterwards, he went over to the judges table to explain what he just did in case they didn’t fully grasp the difficulty of what he did.  Many felt that dunk should have pushed Nance over Mitchell for title, however Dennis Smith Jr. was the one who took to Twitter to voice his displeasure with the results.

https://twitter.com/Dennis1SmithJr/status/965080797282648071

Below are all of the dunks from the contest so you can decide who was the true winner.

All-Star Game:  This was the first year that team captains got to draft their own teams.  It definitely made the game a little more exciting and kept it interesting for all four quarters.  I definitely think this should be the new way of selecting teams with the process being televised so we can see all of the players having fun with one another about who got picked before who.  Of course team captain LeBron James who finished with 29 points, 10 rebounds, and 8 assists was named the game’s MVP.

Honorable Mention: Jimmy Butler was named an All-Star for the fourth time in his career, but chose to chill out on the bench instead of playing.  Butler, who leads the league in minutes played per game, decided to sit out and get some “rest”.  Maybe he is tired or maybe he had been enjoying All-Star Weekend a little too hard, either way we understand Jimmy!

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