Jalen Brunson to participate in 2024 All-Star 3-Point Contest

On Monday, it was revealed that Jalen Brunson, along with six other players including reigning champion Damian Lillard, will appear in this year’s mid-season event pending official confirmation of the full field of participants by the NBA at some point throughout the remainder of the week.

The NBA All-Star Weekend is slated for February 16-18 in Indianapolis and it will kick off with the Rising Stars game on Friday (no Knicks will take part in that game), followed by the usual skills competitions on Saturday featuring the Skills Challenge, the 3-Point Contest, the Slam Dunk Contest, and a new fresh 3-Point Duel pitting NBA’s Stephen Curry and WNBA’s Sabrina Ionescu against each other.

The festivities will end with the 73rd All-Star Game scheduled for Sunday, in which Jalen Brunson will appear for the first time in his career while fellow Knickerbocker Julius Randle won’t be able to play (right shoulder injury) but will still earn a third ASG token to add to his extraordinary resume.

The announcement of Brunson’s participation in the long-range contest came hours before he was snubbed from the Player of the Week award, which landed on Trae Young’s lap instead. Brunson was a nominee, however, after posting 34+ PPG and nearly 7 APG while shooting 49+ FG% from the field in four games through last week.

So far, seven participants have been “confirmed“ for the 3-Point Contest, one fewer than last year's field of eight, though that might have to do with the parallel 3-point showdown between Steph and Sabrina. It’s still unknown if there will be an eighth participant or if the NBA will make up for that absence (Curry) by simply moving him to the 1v1 against Sabrina.

• Damian Lillard (Milwaukee Bucks), the reigning 3-point contest champion
• Donovan Mitchell (Cleveland Cavaliers)
• Tyrese Haliburton (Indiana Pacers), who will compete at home
• Lauri Markkanen (Utah Jazz)
• Malik Beasley (Milwaukee Bucks)
• Jalen Brunson (New York Knicks), marking his first All-Star game appearance
• Tyrese Maxey (Philadelphia 76ers), also making his first All-Star game appearance

Lillard, last year’s winner, will aim to be the first player to win consecutive 3-point contests since Jason Kapono in 2006-07 and 2007-08.

Dame has been a little bit up-and-down all year long in his first season as a Buck, and he’s currently shooting 34.7% from three on 8.5 attempts per game. He’s coming off winning the 3-point contest last year after hitting 26 threes in the final round of the 2023 event.

Haliburton, an All-Star starter on top of everything, is set to compete in his first 3-point contest entering the week shooting 39.8% from three-point range this season.

Donovan Mitchell is bagging reys at a 35.1% clip with Jalen Brunson clearly above him banking 41.3% of his 3-point attempts since the start of the season through Monday’s outings.

Lauri Markkanen is shooting 40.1% from three as an elite stretch-4 while Dame’s teammate Malik Beasley, perhaps the lowest-profile player slated to appear in the event, is hitting a preposterous 45.1% of his attempts from beyond the arc. Finally, the other ASG debutant among those in the field, Tyrese Maxey, is hitting treys at a 38.3% rate this season.

On top of the classic 3-point contest, this season the NBA is scheduled to hold a special 1v1 duel between Association and W superstars Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors and Sabrina Ionescu of the New York Liberty.

Ionescu and Curry will follow the same rules of the normal 3-point contest, consisting of five racks of basketballs at five shooting spots behind the three-point line—each with four regular balls and one “money ball” worth two points. One of the five racks will be all money balls at a spot of each player’s choosing, and there will be two pedestals on the wings with a ball on each for a pair of deeper three-pointers, worth three points in the contest.

The NBA has indicated that Curry will shoot from the regular NBA three-point line using an NBA ball while Ionescu will do so from the WNBA three-point line using the WNBA ball. That said, Ionescu took to X of late indicating she’s willing and plans to shoot from behind the NBA line, which is about 18 inches farther than the WNBA one.