The first matchup of this round robin tournament was between Team World and Team Stars. Alperen Şengün didn’t get a shot up, but he contributed with four rebounds and two assists. Scottie Barnes’ three in overtime gave his team the 37-35 win over Team World.
KD started the scoring off with a triple in the second game, helping Team Stripes take down Team Stars. It was another incredibly entertaining 12 minutes of basketball, going all the way down to the wire again. De’Arron Fox hit a game winning three at the buzzer to win 42-39.
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Şengün and KD both missed clutch threes in Game 3, but Durant got his chance to make up for it, nailing his next one for a 38-34 lead with less than 2 minutes to go. Alpi responded with an assist to Wemby for a corner three. 38-37.
Şengün split a pair from the line to tie it with 1:35 remaining, but Kawhi’s drive and dunk broke that tie. After multiple lead changes in the final minutes, Leonard’s and-one with 52.5 seconds left tied it at 43.
Officially takeover time now, Kawhi got his 31st point on 11/13 shooting to put his team ahead by three with 3.5 seconds left in the game. Wembanyama had a great look from deep to give us another overtime game, but he couldn’t convert.
This set the final matchup to be USA vs USA. The old-heads vs the young stars, essentially, where Anthony Edwards got his chance to beat his idol, Kevin Durant.
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With this unfortunately being the least exciting game of the night, Ant-Man got the job done. He earned the MVP for Team Stars as Team Stripes shot 0/8 with multiple turnovers, resulting in a 12-1 start.
The young guns outlasted their veteran peers 47-21 to close out what I found to be a pretty entertaining All-Star Weekend.