The NBA Skills Challenge is not the best event at All-Star Weekend, but it can produce some occasional fun as the opening event at All-Star Saturday Night.
The Skills Challenge has seen some different formats over the years, but this year it was the more standard course with passing and shooting stations both players on each team had to get through and their cumulative time would determine the winner. This year, to keep things moving, the players were limited to three shots from each spot and then allowed to move on to avoid someone shooting threes for 30 seconds trying to make one.
While this was probably the right call, the league did not consider the fact that they put Chris Paul into the competition and when he saw that all you had to do was shoot three times, make or miss, and you got to move on, he would find a way to exploit that. Sure enough, the Spurs came out and Victor Wembanyama and Chris Paul got to the racks for shots and just chucked the balls towards the baseline without even pretending to try and shoot — earning boos from the crowd.
They got through the course in under 50 seconds as a result, but the NBA decided that the mockery of the Skills Challenge was too much and disqualified them for not even trying. Wanting to win the Skills Challenge so badly you flaunt the rules and don’t even try to shoot is the most Chris Paul thing to ever happen — but in a shocking turn of events, Wembanyama said afterwards that it was his idea, not Paul’s. Naturally, Paul and Wemby tried to argue but was unsuccessful, and that opened the door for the Warriors and Cavs teams to make it through to the final round.
The funniest part of the whole thing was when TNT’s Allie LaForce went over to try and talk with Paul and Wembanyama and got denied by someone from either the Spurs or league’s PR department.
The Cavs team of Evan Mobley and Donovan Mitchell would go on to win in the finals over Draymond Green and Moses Moody, but the Spurs actively flaunting the rules was, without a doubt, the most entertaining part of the contest.
