Three trophies will be handed out Saturday night before the new-look All-Star Game on Sunday
• 3 min read
NBA All-Star Weekend is here. And before the league unveils its new All-Star Game format on Sunday, we have some trophies to hand out on Saturday. NBA All-Star Saturday Night is back with three events: the Skills Challenge, 3-point Shootout and Slam Dunk Contest. The action will all take place at the Warriors’ Chase Center in San Francisco.
Before we get to our picks, let’s lay out the schedule for Saturday night.
NBA All-Star Saturday Night schedule
- Times: ~8:15 p.m. ET (Skills Challenge), ~9 p.m. ET (3-point Shootout), ~9:45 p.m. ET (Dunk Contest)
- Date: Saturday, Feb. 15 | Location: Chase Center — San Francisco
- TV channel: TNT and truTV | Live stream: Max
I can’t tell you how invested the Saturday participants are. But I can help guide you strategically through the minefield that is the All-Star Weekend betting market. While I will offer picks below for all of the major events, what is more important is the thought processes I’ll guide you through below. There’s no reliable way to pick winners on All-Star Weekend, but you can almost always at least find the right value.
Skills Challenge
This is the single event I consciously avoid every year. It’s utter chaos. The official tiebreaker is a half-court shooting contest. My actual advice is to avoid this event like the plague. If you insist, though, just ask yourself this: who do you trust to make open shots? Team Rooks is comprised of the top two picks in June’s draft, Alex Sarr and Zaccharie Risacher, both of whom have effective field goal percentages below 50. They’re out. Team Warriors includes Draymond Green. I’m not putting my hard-earned money on someone who shoots like he’s wearing a backpack. That leaves Team Spurs and Team Cavs. If you’re forcing me to make a pick it would be on the Spurs (+220), because Chris Paul and Victor Wembanyama are the sort of competitive maniacs who might just take winning this thing seriously, but, and I cannot stress this enough, this is the event to avoid.
3-Point Contest
The key to betting the 3-point contest isn’t figuring out who to bet. It’s figuring out who not to bet. Remember, the act of shooting a basketball is inherently random. It’s not as though Stephen Curry wins this event every year. So what are our value indicators? First of all, we can take Damian Lillard (+350) off the board entirely. Only Larry Bird has ever won this event three times, and Lillard has won it twice. Lillard has won the last two, but before him, nobody had won it consecutively since Jason Kapono. If you want to bet on a 3-peat, go for it, but I’m not doing so at favorite money.
Who’s in NBA Slam Dunk Contest, 3-Point Shootout? Full list of participants at 2025 All-Star Saturday Night
Jack Maloney
Here’s a strange trend to keep an eye on: outside of recent wins by Lillard and Curry, experience has tended to do more harm than good in this event lately. Karl-Anthony Towns, Joe Harris and Eric Gordon all have recent wins in their first tries in the event. Devin Booker and Buddy Hield both won in their second go-round. While I don’t necessarily think this means you should run to bet the first-timers, it does suggest there’s some value in surprising places. Our first-timers this year are Darius Garland, Cameron Johnson, Cade Cunningham and Norm Powell. I’m not taking Cunningham simply because nothing in his NBA history suggests he’s the same caliber of shooter as his competitors. Johnson at +750, however, represents a nice bit of upside compared to Garland (+500) and Powell (+550), so I’ll take Johnson as my pick here.
Dunk Contest
Finding Dunk Contest odds can be a bit tricky, so we’re borrowing some from Bleacher Report here. We only need to cover one player, though. Take Mac McClung at -220. That line represents implied odds of 68.75%. Now, ask yourself honestly: after having watched the last two Dunk Contests, do you think Mac McClung has less than a 70% chance of winning this thing? To me, the answer feels closer to 80%. He could lose. If voter fatigue exists for MVP, it probably exists for Dunk Contests, too. But we’re not there yet. McClung pops up in our NBA world once a year just to win these things. He’s Dunk Contest royalty now, and the judges are going to give him the benefit of the doubt that comes with that. The tie goes to McClung. I have a hard time seeing anyone beating him outright. I almost never suggest minus-money bets on single outcomes, but don’t overthink this one.
