It’s almost time for All-Star weekend. My favorite part of the festivities before the game is usually the dunk contest, but after looking at the contestants this year, I might have to pick something else. Perhaps the 3-point shootout…
Looking at the competitors this year, we should be in for an interesting competition. You’ve got defending champion James Jones of the Miami Heat, his teammate Mario Chalmers, the Orlando Magic’s Ryan Anderson, Anthony Morrow of the New Jersey Nets, Joe Johnson of the Atlanta Hawks and Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
I feel like they got 4 really good 3-point shooters for the competition and then just grabbed 2 guys who were already going to be there for the All-Star game to fill out the roster. Jones is the defending champ, Anderson leads the league in 3’s made by a long shot, in second place is Morrow and Chalmers is 5th in the league in 3-point percentage.
None of the top four guys in percentage will be participating, including the biggest snub in my opinion, Ray Allen. Now, as far as I know, they don’t announce who they asked to be in the contest, just who is going to participate, so they might have asked any number of other players who turned down the offer, but I think Ray Allen should be there.
Kevin Love and Joe Johnson can obviously shoot 3’s but I don’t think they’re going to do well in the competition. Johnson is the only one in the competition besides Jones who has already done it before, so he might be OK. Love might have a decent set shot to knock down 3’s but I don’t think he’s going to be able to get into that shooter’s rhythm that it takes to win this competition.
Experience is crucial in the 3-point shootout, so I’m going to have to predict that James Jones takes it home again. I think he’ll be in a tight race with his teammate Chalmers with Ryan Anderson just behind them. Usually when I try and predict these things, I’m completely wrong, so we can probably expect to see Kevin Love hoisting the trophy by the end of the night.
We’ll see next weekend.
