NEW ORLEANS — The new look for the Slam Dunk Contest was no slam dunk.
In an attempt to breathe new life into the longtime headlining event for Saturday night of All-Star Weekend, the NBA turned the contest into a team competition, matching a group of three Eastern Conference players — John Wall, Paul George and Terrence Ross — against three from the West — Damian Lillard, Ben McLemore and Harrison Barnes. And the East came out on top.
But the format left a lot to be desired. The first issue was no one inside the arena seemed to understand the new format. Fans mostly sat on their hands instead of cheering because they didn’t know when to do so.
The other issue was it wasn’t clear when the competition was going to end. The fact it was a best-of-five competition between the East and West was lost on the crowd. And while the final dunk of the night — a reverse Wall took out of the hands of the Wizards’ mascot — was terrific, many at the arena didn’t know it was the final dunk until the East team was crowned champions.
That said, the players seemed to be in favor of the new look.
“I think with the new format, a lot of people will like to get into it, because it takes a lot of pressure off of you,” said Wall, who was crowned “Dunker of the Night” via an online fan vote. “You don’t have to have so many dunks set up for yourself, and you don’t have to go every round thinking, ‘Well, if I don’t make this, I don’t make that, I can’t move onto the next round.’ “So I think it’s a lot easier, a lot easier chance to win, and why not go out there and have fun. It was a great opportunity for me, this being my first All-Star, to go out there and show what I can do.”
The Nets’ Joe Johnson had one goal going into Saturday night’s 3-Point Contest: to do better than he did in his first time in the competition.
Unfortunately for Johnson, that’s about all he did.
After a dreadful start in which he made two of his first 10 shots, Johnson recovered somewhat, but went so slowly he had time to get off only one shot on the final rack of five balls. He finished with 11 points — the lowest total of the eight contestants in the competition, though better than the eight points he had when he last competed, in 2005 as a member of the Suns.
“I didn’t do what I wanted to do, but I did better than last time,” he said with a sheepish smile afterwards.
Johnson said the reason he went so slowly was he was being cautious after missing so many shots early on.
“You know what? You have the time going in your head,” he said. “But you’re so concerned about making shots and I got off to such a bad start … that’s why I didn’t know where to put the money rack. I knew I couldn’t put it last because I wouldn’t have enough time.
“But it was fun, man. I had a good time with it.”
The contest came down to Bradley Beal, representing the East, and Marco Belinelli, representing the West. They went to an overtime round after each finished with a final-round score of 19.
Belinelli won with a blistering overtime round of 24 points, besting Beal’s 18 points.
In the Skills Challenge, the team of Damian Lillard and Trey Burke came away with a victory by the smallest of margins. Burke’s finger roll fell through the net at 45.2 seconds, beating Michael Carter-Williams and Victor Oladipo by one tenth of a second.