First big winner of NBA All-Star Saturday is former UK star Bam Adebayo
The NBA’s All-Star Saturday Night tipped off with the Skills Challenge, and former University of Kentucky star Bam Adebayo won the event, defeating Indiana’s Domantas Sabonis in the championship round.
“Got me a trophy,” Adebayo said after his victory. “A special one. I’m going to give it to my mom. …
“It’s because all she’s been through and all the struggles she’s been through and what the living conditions I had to go through and how she still strived to make me happy and make our house feel like home,” Adebayo said of his mother, Marilyn Blount. “I can’t do nothing but give her that and keep giving her every other accolade I get.”
The Skills Challenge is a three-round, obstacle-course competition that tests players’ dribbling, passing, agility and three-point shooting. The field featured a mix of guards and frontcourt players, and the participants faced off in a head-to-head, bracket-style tournament format.
Matched up against Brooklyn Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie in the first round, Adebayo was nearly perfect. The Miami Heat big man got the chest pass through the hoop on his first attempt and then made his first three-point attempt to eliminate Dinwiddie.
In the second round, Adebayo faced Raptors forward Pascal Siakam. Adebayo made the first chest pass once again, but missed his first three-point attempt before sinking the second to eliminate Siakam and advance to the championship round.
In the final round, Adebayo again hit his first chest pass and then drilled his third three-point attempt to eliminate Sabonis and win the competition.
Adebayo credited a little bit of luck in winning the event.
“They kept putting me on my same side,” he said. “After the first one, I was like, ‘I’ve got a chance.’ In practice, you go through it on the left side.”
The only other Heat player to ever take part in the Skills Challenge is Dwyane Wade, who participated in the event three times (2006, 2007, 2008) and won it in 2006 and 2007. The first All-Star Skills Challenge was held in 2003.
“I’m just trying to be like him,” Adebayo said of Wade. “Trying to live that legacy, just trying to do something special like he did for the Miami Heat and the city of Miami.”
Another ex-Cat, Karl-Anthony Towns, was the Skills Challenge winner in 2016.
▪ Former Kentucky star Devin Booker reached the finals of the Three-Point Contest before losing on Buddy Hield’s last shot.
Booker, the 2018 winner of the event and a first-time All-Star for the Phoenix Suns, scored 26 points in championship round. Hield, who plays for the Sacramento Kings, hit four of five shots on his last rack to finish with 27 points.
▪ The Heat’s Derrick Jones Jr. and the Orlando Magic’s Aaron Gordon needed a dunk-off to decide a dunk contest winner with Jones prevailing 48-47 in the one that determined who left with the trophy.
This story was originally published February 15, 2020 at 9:04 PM.