Durant, LeBron rally late to win
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — LeBron James was trading lobs with Dwyane Wade again. Kyrie Irving, too. And after making a stepback 3-pointer late, he stared down Joel Embiid. Oh, this mattered. Team LeBron, down 20 in the second half, rallied to beat Team Giannis 178164 in the All-Star Game Sunday night. MVP Kevin Durant scored 31 points for the team James drafted and led to victory in the captain’s-choice format for a second consecutive season.
Giannis Antetokounmpo — the first-time captain — led scorers with 38. Paul George and Khris Middleton each added 20 for Team Giannis, which got 17 apiece from Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook.
“We just started making shots,” Durant said.
Durant is now a twotime MVP, also winning it back in 2012. He lauded Charlotte for the weekend.
“Thanks for the hospitality,” Durant said. “It was an amazing weekend.”
The highlights were absurdly good.
Curry slammed the ball off the floor on a break and watched it ricochet too high for most humans — but Antetokounmpo isn’t most humans. The Greek Freak slammed Curry’s unconventional alley-oop.
Team Giannis set an AllStar record with 23 field goals in the first quarter, topping the mark of 22 set on four other occasions — by both the West and the East in the first quarter of the 2017 game, and by the West in both the second and third quarters of the 2016 game.
The 53 points tied a onequarter record as well, matching the total by the West in the third quarter of the 2016 games and by the East in the first quarter in 2017. But when it was time to compete, things tightened up, at least by All-Star standards.
When Team LeBron used a flurry of 3s to come back, the bench was buzzing — sometimes running onto the court, the celebrations a bit more exuberant than usually allowed.
And the farewells for Miami’s Wade and Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki — added to the game by Commissioner Adam Silver to honor their careers — were festive, as everyone wanted.
Nowitzki entered the game late in the first quarter and made his first three shots — all 3-pointers — before heading back to the bench.
Wade checked in not long after Nowitzki took the floor and achieved a primary mission: one more alley-oop lob from James.