NBA games of the week: Young winners of All-Star weekend
By Chazz Scogna
The NBA games of the week is brought to you by the the players who had their best weekend at All-Star weekend.
If you’re the NBA, this has to be one of the better All-Star weekends in recent memory right? Of all the paths the competitions could have taken, say Wayne Ellington winning the 3-point contest, the NBA had a fortunate weekend, with young talent taking all the major hardware.
Let’s break it down. For one, the Rising Stars Challenge was more than just an exhibition between the best young players in the league. It was a showcase for players outside of the United States — the rest of the world is stacked. Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, Jamal Murray, Dario Saric, Lauri Markkanen are all players the league looks at and celebrates. The international pool of players in the Challenge have to have NBA league officials salivating. And that’s without including American studs like Donovan Mitchell, Jayson Tatum and take your pick of whoever else.
Even better, the Rising Stars Challenge wasn’t the only display of the safety of the future of the NBA. Devin Booker, who plays for arguably the worst team in the league, won the 3-point contest, breaking the record for most points in a round, albeit with cooked rules. The aforementioned Mitchell, who is approaching the Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kawhi Leonard Scale of late steals, won the Slam Dunk Contest. Mitchell has become a lightning rod for NBA attention and is already leaving Utah Jazz fans with foggy memories of that player they lost in free agency. Was it Gary … no George … er … Gordon! Hayward.
Or how about the Skills Challenge, where Spencer Dinwiddie, someone most people probably never heard of, defeated Markkanen in the finals. A second-round pick with none of the hype of players like Embiid or The Finnisher.
By Sunday, the NBA was playing with house money when the best talents in the game took the court. But man, the future of the NBA is in great hands. What a time to be a fan. Here are the games of the week.