NBA All-Star Weekend Skills Challenge

The NBA Skills Challenge (officially named The Taco Bell Skills Challenge), is a National Basketball Association (NBA) contest held on the Saturday before the annual All-Star Game as part of the All-Star Weekend. First held in 2003, it is a competition to test ball-handling, passing and shooting ability.

The NBA Skills Challenge in 2016

Until the 2022 edition, two participants raced against each other on identical courses by first dribbling between five obstacles while running down the court. Next, the player must throw a pass into an upright hoop. Then, the players must dribble back the full length of the court for a lay up. Shortly after, the players must dribble back down the court and hit a three pointer from the top of the basketball key. The match ends when the first player hits the three pointer. The champion was decided via a single elimination tournament format, with a guard and a frontcourt player guaranteed to face off in the final round. Frontcourt players were first allowed and invited to participate in 2016, and the event has since crowned centers and forwards as winners, beginning with Karl-Anthony Towns that year[1] and followed by Kristaps Porziņģis in 2017, Bam Adebayo in 2020, and Domantas Sabonis in 2021.

In the current format, used since 2022, three teams participate in a four-round competition. The first round is identical to previous editions, this time as a team relay, with the fastest team earning 100 points. The second round is a passing challenge where players must pass the ball through different targets, with the highest-scoring team also earning 100 points. The third round is a shooting challenge where players must make field goals from different spots, with the highest-scoring team earning 200 points. The two highest-scoring teams overall advance to the final round, which is a half-court shootout, where the fastest team to make a field goal from the half-court line wins the entire skills challenge.[2] The format was slightly altered in 2023, with the challenge now ending after three rounds. The order of the first three rounds is reversed and the half-court shootout becoming a tiebreaker round. The current champions are Jordan Clarkson, Walker Kessler, and Collin Sexton from the Team Jazz in 2023.