Parker wins 2012 All Star Skills Challenge

This article is cross-posted at Spurs World

San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker won the Skills Competition of the NBA’s All-Star Saturday night festivities.

Photo via NBA

Parker was the only one of six participants to break 30 seconds in the first round (29.2) and this time of 32.8 in the final run on the obstacle course was better than Boston’s Rajon Rondo (34.6) and New Jersey’s Deron Williams (41.4).

The speedy Parker put together an impressive display on the skills obstacle course, which involves participants moving through a dribbling circuit, successfully throwing chest passes through a hanging tire and driving for a layup.

Williams, the 2008 winner, holds the record for the skills’ course at 25 seconds, but had trouble completing a pass in the final round on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Team New York, consisting of former Knicks star Allan Houston, current Knicks guard Landry Fields and Cappie Pondexter of the WNBA’s New York Liberty, won the Shooting Stars event.



Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves beat Oklahoma City star Kevin Durant to win the 3-Point Shootout contest. The Wolves’ prized big man was consistent throughout, but had to survive a tiebreaker in the first round and sweat out the last few shots from Durant to pull out the 17-14 victory in the finals.

And Utah’s Jeremy Evans who has the moniker ”Human Pogo Stick” set out to put some bounce back into the Slam Dunk Contest.

Evans endeared himself to the fans with a mix of props and creativity, and they voted him the winner of one of the marquee events of the NBA’s All-Star Saturday festivities.

Evans, who got into the competition as a replacement for injured New York guard Iman Shumpert, earned 29 percent of the 3 million votes cast. He beat out Houston’s Chase Budinger, Indiana’s Paul George and Minnesota’s Derrick Williams for the Jazz’s first-ever trophy in the contest.

In a departure from past dunk competitions, fans were given complete voting power and cast their ballots by text message after each of the four participants competed in three one-dunk rounds.