SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Miami’s Tyler Herro edged out Golden State’s Buddy Hield to win the 3-point contest at the NBA’s All-Star Saturday night.
Damian Lillard missed a chance to join Larry Bird and Craig Hodges as the only players to three-peat as 3-point champions with his score of 18 falling one point short of Herro for the final spot in the three-person final.
Herro followed up his third-place performance in the opening round to set the pace in the final with 24 points. He made both special shots worth 3 points and then three of five from the money ball rack worth two points each to end it.
Hield followed up a scintillating opening round with 31 points but missing his first six shots in the final. But he got going after that to the delight of his home crowd and had a chance to pull out the win by making six straight money balls to end it.
He made four in a row before one shot rimmed out. He made the final shot to end with 23 points.
“I got lucky,” Herro said. “I thought Buddy was going to run off the last five. It was a great competition.”
Darius Garland came in third with 19 points in the final round.
Hield put up the best score of the opening round with 31 points — making both of the special balls worth 3 points — to the delight of his cheering Warriors teammates Stephen Curry and Draymond Green. Hield tied Curry for the most points ever in a round.
Garland made four of five shots from the 2-point money ball rack to come in second in the opening round with 24 points and Herro had 19.
Brooklyn’s Cam Johnson, Norman Powell of the Clippers, Detroit’s Cade Cunningam and New York’s Jalen Brunson also all failed to advance out of the first round.
Skills Challenge
Cleveland duo Evan Mobley and Donovan Mitchell teamed up to knock off hometown heroes Moses Moody and Green to win the NBA’s Skills Challenge crown.
The final game after San Antonio’s duo of Victor Wembanyama and Chris Paul was disqualified for trying to cheat the rules in the obstacle course that features players speeding through stations with various passing and shooting drills.
The Cavaliers went first in the final round and raced through the course in 1 minute, 0.3 seconds as Mobley and Mitchell easily made almost all of their shots from three spots on the floor on their first attempt.
Moody made it through the first round easily for the Golden State’s duo but Green missed all three chest passes and struggled to make his shots. He couldn’t even make it to the final two stations before time ran out to match the time set by Cleveland.
Wembanyama and Paul went first in the opening round and were loudly booed for not even trying to make real attempts on their shots, just tossing the balls off the racks. They were ultimately disqualified.
“We tried something that we thought could win,” Paul said. “To see if we had the best time, so … it was fun.”
The rookie team of Atlanta’s Zaccharie Risacher and Washington’s Alex Sarr were also eliminated in the first round with their time of 1:20.6 ending up 1.2 seconds behind the Cavaliers.
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA
Josh Dubow, The Associated Press
