Kristaps Porzingis wins the NBA Skills Challenge

Kristaps Porzingis made it two straight wins for the bigs with a win in the Skill Challenge at NBA All-Star Weekend!

The NBA Skills Competition has the potential to be one of the most exciting events of All-Star Saturday night. Thanks to the addition of bigs vs. smalls, and adding a head-to-head bracket format, there’s some actual competition in what used to be a dull event.

The event is no longer dominated by guards casually strolling around an obstacle course with the crowd clearly waiting for the later more exciting events. It’s a race, the crowd can get into it, and the bigs get a chance to showcase that they’re just as skilled as the guards. They did win it all last year.

This year’s representative for the bigs was Kristaps Porzingis taking on Gordon Hayward from the guards. Hayward had a clear advantage in this one after taking out last year’s finalist Isaiah Thomas, and the speedy John Wall in round one.

However, Hayward was behind in his races the entire way and only managed to beat them thanks to his competition missing the final 3-point shot. Porzingis, on the other hand, dominated Nikola Jokic and topped Anthony Davis to reach the finals and showed he had what it took to win.

The final competition was extremely exciting all the way to the end. It was a close race, but Porzingis managed to come out at top by draining the final 3-point shot on his first attempt. That’s two straight wins for the bigs and the guards might need to start taking this event a little more seriously. After all, they’re supposed the be the more “skilled” ones.

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Unfortunately this year’s event wasn’t quite as exciting as last year’s, but it was still really fun thanks to the bigs being a part of it. Hopefully the NBA will keep the formula the way it is for next season without changing much. After all, if it’s not broke then don’t fix it.