Biggest Winners and Losers from 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend
Andy Bailey@@AndrewDBaileyFeatured Columnist IVFebruary 19, 2024Biggest Winners and Losers from 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend0 of 11
Damian Lillard (L), Tyrese Haliburton (R)Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images
INDIANAPOLIS ā The NBA took over downtown Indianapolis over the weekend, where it had its annual celebrity game, Rising Stars games, skills challenge, three-point shootout, dunk contest, and of course, the All-Star Game.
As always, the event had its highs. It also had some lows. And Bleacher Report was there to take it all in.
Below, you’ll find the biggest winners and losers from the NBA’s All-Star festivities.
Loser: Team Pau1 of 11
Jaime Jaquez Jr.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images
Inside Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the first big event of the weekend went down on Friday.
The league’s mini-tournament featuring three teams of NBA rookies and sophomores, as well as one squad of G Leaguers, played three games to target scores.
The first was relatively uneventful, with Team Jalen’s Bennedict Mathurin and Chet Holmgren topping Team Tamika’s Scoot Henderson and Paolo Banchero.
Prior to the second game, Team Pau’s stacked roster was introduced.
Victor Wembanyama is going to win Rookie of the Year. Jaime Jaquez Jr., Brandin Podziemski and Cason Wallace are all important contributors on teams that will likely make the playoffs. Brandon Miller and Jabari Smith Jr. are two of the game’s emerging three-and-D forwards.
And from the moment their game against Team Detlef’s roster full of G League players started, it was clear they were going to get dramatically outhustled.
This may be the biggest national showcase any of Team Detlef’s players will get (with the exception of dunk contest fixture Mac McClung and some of the G League Ignite players who’ll be drafted). And they absolutely played like it.
They were first to seemingly every loose ball. They were playing actual, engaged defense. At one point, they went up 13 in a game with a target score of 40. By then, the game was pretty much over for a roster that seemed designed to win the whole thing.
After seeing how that semifinal played out, Team Jalen looked more locked in for the Final. They didn’t want to suffer the same embarrassment as Team Pau. And they didn’t. Mathurin took down Team Detlef and earned Rising Stars MVP honors, but the G League players made the most of their opportunity.
Winner: G League2 of 11
Matas BuzelisJoe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images
After Team Detlef’s win, Matas Buzelis told reporters that there are a “lot of good players everywhere.” Some just need the right moment to showcase what they can do.
For Buzelis, a projected top-10 pick, this may have been one of those moments. In the win, he had a game-winning shot, seven points, two rebounds and two assists in less than 10 minutes.
And he wasn’t the only one with something to play for.
“I think it was very obvious the G League team brought it,” Podziemski said postgame. “They’re playing for of a much bigger reason than just the game. … They’re trying to make rosters. You could tell. It was evident. They played hard from the jump. All they cared about is winning. For us, we’re happy to be here. Feel like we earned it. It was given to us. Obviously, the results showed.”
Again, the Rising Stars challenge ended with a loss for Team Detlef, but it made the right impression on Friday.
McClung’s dunk contest victory on Saturday was a win for the league too, but we’ll get more into that one later.
Loser: Lefty Ant3 of 11
Anthony EdwardsJesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images
Every year, you can count on at least one participant in the skills challenge to take it, well, less than seriously.
And while some of Anthony Edwards’ approach to that event provided some comic relief to the crowd at Lucas Oil Stadium, his teammates (Victor Wembanyama and Paolo Banchero) had to be at least a little annoyed.
Long before his trio was eliminated from contention, Ant started shooting lefty. Two of those shots hit the side of the backboard.
Steve Jones Jr. @stevejones20Anthony Edwards: all in on the left hand bit. pic.twitter.com/kTSfFENmAK
Ultimately, this is all a show. It’s for fun. But Edwards lost the show, in part because he clearly didn’t care about winning it.
Winner: LED Floor4 of 11
Trae YoungJoe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images
The league’s new all-LED floor, which was used for the celebrity game and All-Star Saturday Night, was absolutely wild.
The possibilities with it are endless, but shooting on a lime green, luminescent floor sure seems like it would be distracting.
šŖššš š© @Three_Conepic.twitter.com/CsYmJl3KeA
“I was running from, I think, the corner to the wing, and as I was running, I was trying to look down to where the line is, and there was like some stuff going on,” three-point shootout winner Damian Lillard said. “I don’t think it really distracted me that much from shooting. I think everybody kind of tuned it out at some point, but I’m sure everybody had a moment where something happened and it threw them off a little bit.”
Whatever those moments were, like Lillard said, the shooters did seem to push through them. Multiple players got to 26 points (out of a possible 40) in the first round. And the one or two points that the floor may have cost a few competitors were worth the trade-off.
The video presentations on the floor were spectacular. In the dunk contest, a trail of flame followed Jaquez on his first dunk. Jaylen Brown had multiple tributes on the floor (one to Dominique Wilkins and one to a former high school teammate) during his dunks.
Live stats were updating on the side of the floor that wasn’t in use. During the relay portion of the skills challenge, a live interactive trail showed how quickly previous teams had gotten through the course.
During one break, fans got a chance to run and dribble on an interactive, moving raceway.
For the foreseeable future, this still feels like more of a novelty. It’s great for one-offs like All-Star Saturday, but after seeing it in action, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of it one day being the floor for an actual game.
Losers: Dunk Contest Judges5 of 11
Mac McClungJustin Casterline/Getty Images
Poor Jaylen Brown.
He wanted to break the yearslong trend of star players turning their noses up at the dunk contest, even if he isn’t really a dunk contest-style dunker. And that’s exactly what he did.
But a judge’s panel that included Dominique Wilkins, Fred Jones, Gary Payton, Mitch Richmond and Darnell Hillman consistently overrating his dunks (and underrating those of Jacob Toppin, Mac McClung and maybe even Jaime Jaquez) exposed Brown to multiple choruses of boos from a raucous Lucas Oil Stadium crowd.
The vitriol wasn’t even specifically directed at Brown. It was an effort to steer the judges in the right direction, but they were generally undeterred.
The whole exercise is subjective, of course, but they seemingly ended with the right winner in McClung. The final just may have had more juice if Toppin was in it.
Just compare his (or even Jaquez’s) first-round dunks with Brown’s for yourself.
Fan votes have produced some bad results in various sports and events over the years, but maybe this is one area where they could be trusted.
The people in the stadium were pretty well-tuned to what was most impressive in this year’s dunk contest. And the instantaneous reaction of the thousands in the building (or the millions watching around the world) could at least supplement the votes of the often fallible judges.
Winner: Tyrese Haliburton6 of 11
Tyrese HaliburtonJustin Casterline/Getty Images
This would’ve been an even easier sell had Tyrese Haliburton gotten out of the first round of the three-point contest, but his performance there and in the skills challenge (where he sealed a win in the relay portion with an off-the-backboard dunk), and the general reaction he received from the fans in Indiana throughout the weekend, showed he’s a bona fide superstar.
Indiana Pacers @PacersTyrese Haliburton hit the halfcourt shot to win the Skills Challenge and then hit them with the Reggie choke sign šš„ pic.twitter.com/TN0QoIYQYB
Having the festivities in the town where he plays certainly helped, but it’s just obvious that Haliburton has the potential to be among those to take the marketability reins that have been held by Kevin Durant, LeBron James and others for decades.
“You look around the leagueāI’m going to miss a lot of guys, but you see Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander, [Anthony Edwards], Devin Booker, Luka, Tyrese Maxey, Tyrese Haliburton,” KD said during media day. “There are so many guys inspiring the next generation of hoopers after them to become basketball players that you can’t just pinpoint it to one or two guys.”
Maybe after Sunday’s All-Star game, it might have been a little easier to pinpoint Haliburton.
He didn’t win MVP (more on that in a bit), but he dropped 32 of the East’s 211 points. He went 10-of-14 from deep and handed out six assists in 27 minutes. He was a superstar that night and throughout the weekend. And he may not be the face of only the Pacers for too much longer.
Loser: The Too Cool for School Crowd7 of 11
Luka DonÄiÄ and Nikola JokiÄGarrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images
The Western Conference All-Star team is loaded with future Hall of Famers. It was bigger than the East. Prior to the start of the game, the West felt like a pretty safe bet to win the game.
But then it started, and the degree to which much of that roster just didn’t care was wild.
By the end of the All-Star game, the legend-studded roster of the west had surrendered 211 points.
Let me type that again.
That’s 211 points in a 48-minute basketball game.
Sure, the individual shooting displays put on by Damian Lillard and Tyrese Haliburton deserve a lot of credit. Both were absurdly good. Both hit shots that would’ve been impressive in warmups.
But the Western Conference All-Stars gave marginal effort for maybe three percent of the game (a totally scientific number).
And they’re on the wrong end of an embarrassing 211-186 loss because of it.
Winner: Damian Lillard8 of 11
Damian LillardAdam Hagy/NBAE via Getty Images
Damian Lillard has certainly had his struggles in his first season as a Milwaukee Buck. His effective field-goal percentage is below his career mark and almost six full points below where he was in 2022-23.
The Bucks have been in the bottom half of the league defensively all season, and the collective finger of fans and analysts has often pointed at Lillard for that.
But he was dynamite in defense of his three-point contest title, winning the final round with a distinctly Dame Time performance.
As he approached the final rack, Lillard needed two points to win. He missed the first four shots before drilling the two-point money ball to get to 26 points and the win.
“When I got to the final rack, I didn’t know my exact score, but when I missed a couple, I heard the crowd just oohing and aahing,” he said after the shootout. “Once they kept doing it over and over, I knew I was still alive because I knew they would have stopped if it had been over for me. The next two balls, I missed again, and then I grabbed the next one, and I knew I needed that to win.”
Obviously, it wasn’t the first time in Lillard’s career that he knew what he needed to win before getting it.
And perhaps Saturday’s Dame Time moment will propel him to a few more in the post-All-Star portion of the schedule.
It certainly seemed to warm him up for what was an outrageous All-Star game performance on Sunday.
Lillard took home MVP honors with 39 points and six assists. He was 11-of-23 from deep. He hit two pull-up halfcourt shots. Yes, halfcourt shots. And they weren’t compelled by time or situation. He just did it. Twice.
Yes, the West’s effort on defense was abysmal. But the shotmaking from Lillard would’ve been impressive in just about any setting.
Loser: Conventional Ending for the All-Star Game9 of 11
Giannis AntetokounmpoNathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images
For years, fans, analysts and, presumably, the NBA have been searching for ways to inject a little competitiveness into the All-Star game.
The target score (or Elam Ending) used in recent years was one of the few innovations that seemed to help a little. And in the first year after abandoning it, the Eastern Conference dropped 211 points.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the novelty of a team exceeding 200 in a single basketball game is pretty cool. But it certainly doesn’t suggest much effort was given on the defensive end.
The target score seemed to activate the inner fire that almost every basketball player has when he’s just in a pickup game. For at least a few minutes, everyone was invested in keeping the opposition from scoring the game-winning bucket.
After one year away from the format, plenty of fans have to be clamoring for its return.
Winner: Mac McClung10 of 11
Mac McClungGarrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images
Mac McClung has played a grand total of 65 NBA minutes, but he’s undeniably been one of the highlights of the NBA’s All-Star weekend each of the last two years.
The 25-year-old is now a back-to-back dunk champion after four more gravity-defying jams in Indianapolis.
Of course, it would be easy for a player in his situation to grow cynical. Surely, McClung or people in his orbit have had occasion to feel he hasn’t gotten a fair shot in the league.
His vertical athleticism and body control are obviously better than most players with roster spots, but he just hasn’t been able to stick. And after the contest, he displayed the kind of humility that’s clearly helped him deal with that.
“There’s so many people that came at me before this, like, ‘Oh man, you should be mad. You want to be in the NBA. You deserve to be in the NBA,'” McClung said. “And I do believe I do. But I also think this is my human experience, and I think it’s my human experience for a reason because, without this grind and struggle, I probably wouldn’t be able to impact like I do and have been lucky enough to do things like this. So this is my story, and I’ve really embraced it.”
Winner: Sabrina Ionescu and Stephen Curry11 of 11
Stephen Curry and Sabrina IonescuStacy Revere/Getty Images
Saturday, the NBA introduced a brand-new event that stole the show.
Lucas Oil Stadium was riveted during the shootout between the New York Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescu and the greatest shooter of all time, Stephen Curry.
The crowd erupted as Ionescu hit her first six shots. She got a rousing ovation when she finished with 26 points, after shooting the WNBA ball from the NBA three-point line. And the crowd was locked in during Curry’s pursuit of her tally.
He eventually got there, but the outcome was far from certain. And despite its abbreviated nature, this event may have gotten Saturday’s biggest pop from the crowd.
“For us to deliver a show like that, it was perfect,” Curry said. “Like, just as much excitement as you can build in that short amount of time with two great shooters going at it is pretty special. This will be something we’ll remember for a long time.”
The fans will too, as one of the WNBA’s top ambassadors went shot for shot with an NBA legend.
“I think it’s going to show a lot of young kids out there, a lot of people who might have not believed or even watched women’s sports that we’re able to go out there and put on a show,” Ionescu said. “So it was really exciting to finally be able to do this. Like Steph said, it happened perfectly.”
