Saturday All-Star Events In Toronto

This past weekend, the NBA held its All-Star Weekend in Toronto halfway through the 2015-2016 NBA season. The All-Star Weekend has three days worth of events featuring the best players all throughout the league. On Friday, the All-Star Celebrity game is played pitting a mixture of celebrities, former NBA Stars, and WNBA Stars against each other. After that, the NBA Rising Stars Challenge takes place in which first and second-year players that have made a name for themselves show off their skills and potential. On Sunday, the All-Star game is played where the best players all throughout the league participate in a fun exhibition game. However, the day that many people throughout the world most look forward to is Saturday. On Saturday, the competitions take place for players to show off their individual specialties. The three competitions of the day are the Skills Challenge, the Three Point Competition, and the Dunk Contest.

The first event of the night was the NBA Skills Challenge, in which players would compete in a race that involved dribbling, passing, making layups and/or dunks, and culminating with a three point basket. This skills competition had a little bit of a twist this year though. Usually, the only players who would compete in this challenge were guards, however this year, the guards of the NBA would be competing against the centers and power forwards of the NBA. There were eight participants in the challenge with four guards and four big men. The competition was set up in a bracket formation where a player would have to defeat two of their fellow athletes to advance to the finals. For the guards, the competitors were Jordan Clarkson, CJ McCollum, Isaiah Thomas, and Emmanuel Mudiay. For the big men, the players were Draymond Green, Karl-Anthony Towns, Anthony Davis, and DeMarcus Cousins. In the first round, McCollum beat Clarkson to advance to the semifinals, Thomas defeated Mudiay, Towns bested Green, and DeMarcus Cousins eliminated Anthony Davis. The semifinal round saw Towns defeat Cousins and Thomas taking down McCollum to set up the big man vs. the guard showdown to see if the taller players in the league were just as technically sound as the little guys. In the final round, Towns and Thomas were neck and neck with Towns actually reaching the final obstacle sooner. In the final seconds, the two were engaged in a three-point shootout for the win with Towns eventually putting in the basket and pulling off the major upset.

The second contest of the night was the Three Point Competition where some of the best three point shooters throughout the league could see who was really the best shot. Eight participants compete in the first round and take twenty-five shots with each being worth one point, and nine of the shots being money-ball shots being worth two for a possible total of 34 points. The top three highest scores advance to the second round where the best score wins the championship. In the first round, Klay Thompson, Devin Booker, and Stephen Curry advanced after putting up unbelievable first round scores. In the championship round, Thompson bested his "Splash-Brother" with 27 points, the exact same score that Curry received when he beat out Thompson the previous year.

The final competition of the night was the Dunk Contest. This year's dunk contest was one of, if not the best dunk contests ever according to many of the people watching. The participants for the Dunk Contest were Will Barton, of the Denver Nuggets, Andre Drummond, from the Detroit Pistons, Aaron Gordon, of the Orlando Magic, and the Defending Champion from the Minnesota Timberwolves Zach LaVine. The first round was typical for the Dunk Contest, with each participant pulling off entertaining dunks, but none that really made the crowd explode. However, by the end of the round, it was clear that two of the participants had really come prepared with amazing dunks for the final round: Aaron Gordon and, of course, Zach LaVine. In the final round, the two participants pulled off incredible dunks, and for the first time in the history of the contest, the two combined to get six straight scores of 50 in a row. To get these scores, the two both did similar dunks, however, each dunk became more impressive than the last with LaVine making free throw line dunks and Gordon continuously jumping over his mascot for his dunks. Ultimately, LaVine capped off the contest by making a between-the-legs free-throw line dunk for the win, ending one of the best dunk contests ever.