Timberwolves dominate NBA All-Star Saturday

After the Timberwolves’ Zach LaVine took home MVP honors from Friday night’s Rising Stars Challenge, Karl-Anthony Towns opened Saturday night’s festivities by winning the Skills Challenge before LaVine defended his title in the Slam Dunk contest.

And defend it he did, although not without a serious, entertaining challenge from Orlando’s Aaron Gordon. But more on that in a moment.

The evening began with the Taco Bells Skills Challenge, which took on a new format in 2016. This year, four guards were on one side of an eight-person bracket, taking on four bigs on the other side.

Towns was matched up against Golden State Warriors superstar Draymond Green in the first round — no easy task. Despite struggling with the passing station, he drained his three-pointer on the first try after Green missed his attempt, sending him to a second round match-up with Sacramento’s DeMarcus Cousins.

The second round saw Towns attacking the competition with quite a bit more tenacity than Cousins, leading to him getting to the final challenge, the three-point shot, quick enough to afford multiple attempts and vault him to the championship against the Celtics’ Isiah Thomas.

Both Towns and Thomas hit the pass on the first try in the final round and came screaming up to the three-point arc at the same time. They each missed three times before Towns drained it for the win. The big men had all gathered at mid-court and swarmed him as soon as the shot went down, giving the Skills Challenge the most intensity it’s ever had, by far.

Wolves fans already knew that Towns was freakish, but news flash to the rest of the league and casual fans everywhere: he’s freakish.

The Foot Locker Three-Point Contest was Wolves-less, but it was a lot of fun. The field of eight was whittled down to a final three of Phoenix rookie Devin Booker and Golden State’s Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry.

Curry led heading into Thompson’s final rack, and Klay had to hit his final two shots in order to win, adding quite a bit of drama to the event. He hit the shots and unseated the reigning three-point champion and MVP in Curry, leading the TNT commentators to suggest that the Three-Point Contest should potentially be the headliner of Saturday night.

But then, Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordon happened.

Detroit’s Andre Drummond and Denver’s Will Barton were eliminated in the first round as they each had problems finishing dunks on the first and even second tries, but LaVine and Gordon each grabbed a ’50’ and another solid score in the first round, advancing to the final.

Gordon incorporated the Magic mascot on three dunks, including one with the mascot holding the ball and rotating on a hover board. Gordon brought the ball down by his knees and grabbed his head with his other hand, throwing down a thunderous dunk and getting a ’50’ in the process.

Then, this happened.

Of course, LaVine had a few moments of his own.

LaVine did a couple of things we haven’t seen before, most notably catching catching an alley-oop when jumping from the free throw line (thrown by Andre Miller) and winning the four-dunk dunk-off in the final round with a between the legs dunk after taking off around the free throw line.

Here’s a compilation of all of the dunks, but if you have a chance to re-watch the back-and-forth drama on your DVR or an NBATV re-broadcast of the event I would encourage you to do so.

LaVine wowed us again, and both he and Gordon apparently used up their entire bag of tricks and then some. Afterwards they were each noncommittal about returning next year — they each had to dunk six times on Saturday night, so it’s understandable.

The Timberwolves’ young stars shone bright on the national stage, winning the top individual award in all three events that they had players involved this weekend, from LaVine’s Rising Stars Challenge MVP , to Towns’ Skills Challenge title, to LaVine’s second consecutive Dunk Contest championship.

Next: No Frills Wolves Podcast: On Thibs and Trades

Sunday brings the main event, which is Wolves-less once again. The Timberwolves don’t play again until Friday in Memphis, so we’ll spend some time recapping the unofficial first half of the season throughout the early part of the week.