Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Knicks’ Porzingis wins All-Star skills challenge
Big men reigned supreme in the NBA All-Star Saturday night skills competition.
New York Knicks 7-foot-3 forward Kristaps Porzingis won it, beating Utah’s Gordon Hayward in the finals.
Those vanquished in earlier rounds included guards John Wall of Washington and Isaiah Thomas of Boston, both because they couldn’t make their initial 3-pointers required to close out the course before Hayward did.
Porzingis emerged from the big-men’s division that included the Pelicans’ Anthony Davis and Denver’s Nikola Jokic.
Porzingis and Hayward were neck and neck until the end of the course, but Porzingis hit his 3 first to end it.
The three-round, obstaclecourse competition tests dribbling, passing, agility and shooting skills.
Houston’s Gordon is 3-point champion
Houston’s Eric Gordon has dethroned Golden State splash brother Klay Thompson as the NBA All-Star 3-point contest champion.
And he did it in New Orleans, where he played the previous five seasons before leaving last summer in free agency.
Gordon’s score of 21 in a finalround tie-breaker defeated Cleveland’s Kyrie Irving, the 2013 winner who had 18. The pair had each finished with a score of 20 in the final round, meaning they each had to shoot 25 more balls to decide it.
Thompson was stunningly eliminated in the first round, missing a final shot from the corner that could have put him through ahead of Walker.