Jalen Brunson and Jacob Toppin out early in All-Star Saturday contests

As Saturday came, Saturday went.

The NBA got the second day of the 2024 All-Star Weekend festivities going inside Lucas Oil Stadium on a night reserved for all sorts of contests, from the nobody-cares-about-it Skills Challenge to the historic Steph vs. Sabrina faceoff from range.

Coincidentally, the other two contests not mentioned above and that took place yesterday— the classic and marquee two events of the night, for what’s worth—were the ones featuring a couple of New York Knicks: Jalen Brunson and Jacob Toppin in the 3-point and Slam Dunk contests respectively.

And all of the excitement for what? For nuttin’, as both events ended with their reigning champs entering Saturday retaining their crowns.

Booo-ring!

3-Point Contest: Jalen Brunson (1st Round Out)

Brunson got his weekend started early and hooped in the first of the two different venues he’ll visit in Indy, Lucas Oil Stadium yesterday and Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Sunday for the All-Star game.

JB started his shooing run slowly, hitting just one shot from the first spot. Things got better for him as he moved inside, but it’s not that the performance was sublime. All things considered, however, Brunson was good enough to reach the final rack with 20 points in his tally and needing just six more points to make it a five-way tie among first-round participants.

I said “just” six more points because while that’s a full rack of money elsewhere (four normal balls, one bonus ball), it wasn’t for Brunson on the right corner as that’s where he placed his full-bounty-rack on Saturday with the five balls accounting for a potential maximum score of 10, not 6, points.

Too bad for Brun, he only hit two treys from there missing the other three. One more make, and he’d have at least made it there. Yikes.

Damian Lillard, Karl-Anthony Towns, Trae Young, and Tyrese Haliburton all hit 26 points in the first round and the former three advanced to the final after a 30-second tiebreaker.

It took them all of his shots to get crowned champ on back-to-back ASW, but that’s what he did becoming the first player to win two consecutive 3-Point Contests since Jason Kapono did it in 2007 and 2008.

The other NBA gunslingers—not named Dame or Kap—to ever win back-to-back 3-Point contests are Larry Bird, Craig Hodges, Mark Price, Jeff Hornacek, and Peja Stojakovic. Supreme Snipers.

Slam Dunk Contest: Jacob Toppin (1st Round Out)

It’s a shame we only got to watch Jacob dunk the rock twice instead of four times on Saturday Night. Actually, Toppin was stolen off a final berth in plain sight and in front of a national audience and thousands of souls watching live on location inside Lucas Oil Stadium.

Jacob was picked for the SDC to do what he does best, dunking basketballs. And that’s precisely what he did a couple of times he got the chance. He got things going by jumping over former Slam Dunk Champion—and his brother—Obi Toppin without breaking a sweat, and then capped his first round off with a smooth between-the-legs 360 dunk out of reach for 99% of the League.

Turns out Jacob’s name wasn’t in the script handed by the Association to the judges on Saturday, one which instead featured (deservingly) reigning Dunk Champ Mac McClung of the Osceola Magic and (disgracefully) Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics.

Sadly, Jacob Toppin is a bonafide G League player currently on a two-way contract with the New York/Westchester Knicks while Brown is an All-Star scheduled to appear on Sunday’s ASG. When it comes to dunking balls, it’s clear who is the All-Star-caliber player at that and who’s not, even though the NBA denied Toppin his chance at bringing the trophy back to his family crib.

It would have been funny for the judges to screw everything even more than they already did, and they were close after forcing Mac to complete a contest-ending, title-clinching, perfect-score-50 dunk to beat Brown.

McClung joined a very select club of back-to-back Slam Dunk Champions that now features his name along with those of Zach Lavine, Nate Robinson, Jason Richardson, and Michael Jordan. Not bad company.