Steph wins NBA All-Star 3-point shooting contest.
Warriors star Curry shows why he’s league’s best, wins 3-point contest
Stephen Curry not only stole the show at the NBA All-Star Weekend on Sunday, he nearly made history.
The Warriors star almost became the first player to ever win both the All-Star Game MVP award and the 3-point contest in the same weekend.
It took some heroics for the Warriors’ star to win the 3-point contest as it all came down to one shot at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. It then took an incredible shooting performance by his Team LeBron teammate Giannis Antetokounmpo to deny Curry the All-Star Game MVP award.
Curry made the final “moneyball” shot from the corner to beat Utah Jazz guard Mike Conley
and win the 3-point contest for the second time in his career. Curry, who last won the event in 2015, became the seventh player ever to win the event multiple times.
In the second and final round, Curry made 4 of 10 from the corner, 8 of 10 from the wing, 3 of 5 from the top of the key and both 30-footers to win the 3-point contest. He scored an event-high of 31 in the first round.
After picking up his trophy, Curry then took his spot alongside team captain LeBron James for the All-Star Game and continued bombing away.
Curry buried eight 3-pointers and scored 28 points to help Team LeBron beat Team Durant 170-150.
The Warriors’ star had 22 of those points at halftime while tying an AllStar Game record with six 3-pointers in a half. One of Curry’s 3-pointers came from near midcourt, some 42 feet away.
But it was Milwaukee’s Antetokounmpo who captured MVP honors by scoring a game-high 35 points — making all 16 of his shots.
Antetokounmpo prevented Curry from becoming the first to ever win the All-Star Game MVP and 3-point contest in the same weekend since the long-distance event began in 1986. Larry Bird and Kyrie Irving remain the only players to ever win the MVP award and 3-point contest.
Curry, meanwhile, had to beat five players to win the 3-point title for the first time since 2015.
Also participating in the 3-point event was Chicago’s Zach LaVine, Utah’s Donovan
Mitchell and Boston’s Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum.
Conley, who was the runner-up, had an impressive showing, and scored 27 before Curry in the second round.
That put the pressure on Curry, the league-leader in
made 3-pointers this season. As he approached his “moneyball” rack on the right wing, Curry trailed Conley’s pace but made all four of his shots for extra points, then the final shot from the corner to give him the win.
“(My mind) kind of went blank,” Curry said of making the last clutch shot. “Whatever crowd is in here, I could hear the temperature rise a little bit and I just knew I had to knock it down. It was a fun battle.”
The crowd Curry referred to was fake crowd noise pumped in during this scaled-down All-Star weekend.
Rather than holding the 3-point contest and other skill events on a different night than the AllStar Game, the NBA condensed the showcase. The 3-point contest and skills competition took place before the All-Star Game, and the dunk contest was held at halftime.
As Curry walked off the court, he told the Warriors’ social media team that his win was dedicated to Klay Thompson, his teammate who is out for the season with an Achilles tear and won the 3-point contest in
2016. That was the last time either of the Splash Bros. won the event.
“This one goes out to Klay Thompson,” Curry said. “We got it done, big fella.”
Before lacing up for the 3-point contest, Curry reflected on his recent challenges of getting back to the event, including a season derailed by a hand injury, his team missing the resumption of the season in the bubble and the pandemic that delayed the start of the 2020-21 season.
In all, Curry played just one basketball game in 14 months before this season. During his press conference ahead of Sunday’s scaled-down All-Star Weekend, Curry expressed appreciation for not only being able to play again, but also being able to return to his all-star level.
“With the injury last year and the pandemic and everything that’s happened over the last year,” Curry said, “to know how much work I put in to get my game back to where I wanted to be and to be healthy and to be able to play at a high level, it means a lot.”