Saturday’s NBA All-Star events will begin with the Skills Challenge, which features three teams of three players each going through a series of obstacles on the court. Here’s a look at the participating teams and the format for the 2024 event.
Just like previous All-Star weekends, the hometown Indiana Pacers will have a squad featuring Tyrese Haliburton, Bennedict Mathurin and Myles Turner. There will be a group featuring the last three No. 1 overall picks in the draft with Anthony Edwards, Paolo Banchero and Victor Wembanyama. Edwards and Banchero will be in the All-Star Game as reserves. There’s a third team featuring All-Stars Scottie Barnes, Tyrese Maxey and Trae Young. Barnes and Young were replacement players for Joel Embiid and Julius Randle, who were injured ahead of the All-Star break.
The format for the Skills Challenge remains the same. There will be three rounds featuring a team relay, team passing and team shooting. The relay will be the first event, with all three players from the team participating. There will be checkpoints on the court and each player will go through them, with a maximum of three attempts on certain ones like the 35-foot pass and the three-point shot. The event is timed, and the team with the fastest time will gain 100 points.
The passing event will have the entire team participating together. It’s a 30-second event where the players will attempt to hit targets, with the catch that a player cannot go for the same target twice in a row. The team with the most points at the end of this round will add 100 points for the event.
The final event is a team shooting drill, with the players shooting from five different spots on the floor. Every player will start at the fifth spot, and every player must take at least one shot. The players must change shot locations and the same shot cannot be repeated. Every team has one minute for the round. The winning team will get 200 points.
In the event two teams are tied after these three events, there’s a tiebreaker which involves making a half-court shot. The team who makes a half-court shot the fastest wins the tiebreaker and the Skills Challenge.