Sunday 16 February 2020 06:20, UK
Miami Heat forward Bam Adebayo defeated Indiana Pacers forward Domantas Sabonis in the 2020 All-Star Skills Challenge on Saturday night.
"The sky is the limit for players the way the game is going," Adebayo said of winning the competition against a fellow big man and over a field of multiple guards.
Players dribble from one 3-point line to the other winding between four vertical NBA logo obstacles, stopping to fire a chest pass through a station with a round opening just large enough to fit a basketball.
Once the pass is successful, players dribble back to the end they started from, make a lay-up and return to the opposite end of the court where the one-on-one contest ends - when one player makes a three-pointer from the top of the key.
Adebayo drew 2018 skills champion Spencer Dinwiddie of Brooklyn in the first round and finished off Toronto's Pascal Siakam without a miss once again to earn his spot in the final.
"I told Spencer I'm going to be the champion," Adebayo said. "We were walking in, and I told Spencer I was going to be a champion."
Sabonis beat and Milwaukee Bucks All-Star forward Khris Middleton in the second semi-final. He made his fourth three-point try to make the finals. Middleton lost the ball attempting his lay-up but recovered in time to have a shot at the win.
The players eliminated in the first round were Dinwiddie (Brooklyn Nets), Patrick Beverley (LA Clippers), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Oklahoma City Thunder) and defending champion Jayson Tatum (Boston Celtics).
In the final, it took three tries for Adebayo to make his three-pointer to win, and he still wound up beating Sabonis to the final make. Sabonis felt he rushed his second shot, and that gave Adebayo a leg up.
Neither Sabonis nor Adebayo was surprised that a pair of bigs wound up duelling for the Skills title.
"It's just showing how the game is changing and how big men and power forwards are basically bringing up the ball, passing the ball," Sabonis said.
Adebayo dedicated the win to his mother - she'll be getting the trophy as well - and said he was particularly honoured to compete with a patch on that paid tribute to Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and the other seven victims of the helicopter crash that took their lives in Southern California on January 26.
"When I was in high school, I said if I get to the NBA, I want to meet Kobe," Adebayo said. "I felt like this (was) my All-Star to do it. I feel like he's been more of an impact now than he was back then. Not saying that him living didn't do anything for me, but it just means more now that I know I can never meet him. I feel like he knows who I am now. So just keep trying to make him proud."
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