Jacob Toppin got hosed and other highlights from All-Star Saturday night
Saturday night of NBA All-Star weekend is just as good if not better than the actual All-Star game on Sunday. This year’s rendition featured three former Kentucky players and they all could have, should have, would have won their respective contests but ultimately fell just a little bit short.
Tyrese Maxey and Karl-Anthony Towns went to bed kicking themselves for not making another basket or two (more on that in a bit), but Jacob Toppin went to bed wishing he could kick the panel of dunk contest judges.
After Oscar Tshiebwe and Cason Wallace started the La Familia reunion in Indianapolis strong on Friday, Maxey, Towns, and Toppin represented Big Blue Nation well on Saturday.
In all of sports, there might not be another once-great event to lose its shine more than the NBA Dunk Contest. In a competition where previous winners include Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and John Wall, the Association can barely recruit NBA players to participate nowadays, much less NBA All-Stars.
That being said, shout out to Jaylen Brown. He is the first All-NBA player to step into the slam dunk ring for years, and for that, he deserves a ton of credit. However, the judges may have awarded him a little too much credit when it came to scoring his actual dunks, and it cost Jacob Toppin.
Jacob Toppin got hosed in the dunk contest
Let’s face it. I know Jacob Toppin. You know Jacob Toppin. Viewers of 2023 NCAA Tournament AT&T commercials know Jacob Toppin. However, the casual NBA fan outside of the state of Kentucky likely had no idea Obi even had a brother.
On top of minimal name recognition and just five games played in the NBA this season, Toppin is a pretty stoic guy. In a contest where showmanship is half the battle, his head-down approach to the craft did not earn him any extra style points.
What should have earned him points, however, is his ability to jump out of the gym. On his first dunk, Toppin kept it in the family and brought out his brother Obi. Toppin leaped over him and threw down a reverse two-handed jam that should have sent the crowd into much more of a frenzy than the golf clap that ensued. The judges gave him a 47.8.
His second dunk was even better. Toppin did a 360 between-the-legs two-handed slam that, on the surface, appeared to defy gravity. However, a clearly biased judges panel scored his second attempt lower than his first dunk at 47.2. All Toppin could do was wave his hand in disgust as the crowd booed the nonsensical results.
It wasn’t the only time the arena jeered the judges’ scores. Jaylen Brown’s dunks were…fine, I guess. Nothing special, but they were okay. However, the star quality attached to his name gave him the boost he needed and he edged out Jacob Toppin to face off against eventual winner, Mac McClung, in the Finals.
Big Blue Nation might forgive Brown, however, because he dedicated his first dunk of the final round to the late, great, Terrence Clarke.
Karl-Anthony Towns finishes second in the 3-point contest
The 3-point contest is the true main event on All-Star Saturday night, and everyone knows it. The NBA still insists otherwise, but the idea that the Slam Dunk Contest is more exciting is a fallacy that cannot be continued for much longer.
Former 3-point champion, Karl-Anthony Towns, nearly won his second trophy in just three years, but ultimately came up just short. Instead, Damian Lillard took home the crown for the second year in a row.
Towns and three other players all tied in the first round with a strong score of 26. In the 30-second tiebreaker, Towns led all shooters to advance to the final round along with Lillard and Trae Young. There, Towns posted a respectable score of 24, and though it looked like Lillard was going to pass this mark easily, he missed the first four balls of the final rack while tied with Towns at 24.
However, in true Dame fashion, he nailed the final money ball at the buzzer to bump his score to 26 and win it all.
Next year, KAT.
Tyrese Maxey’s team lands in second place in the Skills Challenge
The NBA moved the Skills Challenge to a team format a couple of years ago, and this year’s three-men squads featured one former Wildcat. Tyrese Maxey suited up alongside Trae Young and Scottie Barnes for Team All-Stars and faced off against Team 1st Picks (Victor Wembanyama, Paolo Banchero, and Anthony Edwards) and Team Pacers (Tyrese Haliburton, Benedict Mathurin, and Miles Turner).
Maxey and Barnes teamed up in the Skills Challenge back in 2022 and it didn’t go so well, so they sought out revenge on Saturday.
The first round was an obstacle course setup where players had to navigate around slalom-style posts and successfully make a series of passes and shots. Maxey didn’t help his team’s cause when he went the wrong way around a post and had to turn around and go back. Team Indy won round 1.
Round 2 was like pop-a-shot, but with passing. Each player had to weave back and forth between three locations and pass the ball into moving cylinders, each worth a different number of points. Maxey and Team All-Stars did much better in this contest but ultimately lost in a tiebreaker pass-off to Team Indy.
Going into the final round, Team Indy had 200 points while Team 1st Picks and Team All-Stars had zero. However, the final round was worth 200 points and was all about shooting and rebounding, areas that best suited Team All-Star’s skill set.
Maxey and company nearly didn’t miss and blew away both teams easily. This meant it all came down to a final half-court shooting competition to determine the winner. Whoever sunk a half-courter first won it all.
While Maxey ultimately was the team member who eventually made the shot, it took nearly a full minute and several heaves for one to drop. That left Team Indy with plenty of time to deliver, and they did with 20 seconds to spare.
Unfortunately, all that half-court shooting at the end of Kentucky practices didn’t help Tyrese Maxey on this night.
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