SALT LAKE CITY -- All Dame does at All-Star Weekends is hit winners.
In 2021, Lillard made the three that ended the All-Star Game in Atlanta, which was one of the first years the NBA moved to a format in which the game is decided when one of the two teams hits a target score rather than with the clock expiring after 48 minutes of play.
At the 2023 Three-Point Contest, held Saturday night at Vivint Arena, Lillard eliminated Buddy Hield with his last attempt of the final round to win the competition in his third try.
And in the final event of the weekend, the 6-3 point guard in his 11th season out of Weber State made the final shot of the weekend, a 30-foot pullup three from the foul line extended, to give Team Giannis the 184-175 victory over Team LeBron in the 2023 NBA All-Star Game in front of a sellout crowd of 17,886 Sunday night at Vivint Arena.
“It’s a real thing, I come up big at the end,” said Lillard. “Obviously tonight wasn’t a game where it was just traps and real defense being played, but just those moments, I always find myself in those moments being the one. This was just another case of that.”
While Lillard made the last shot, he was only in a position to do so thanks to being selected by Giannis Antetokounmpo with the first pick of the All-Star reserves draft.
“We was up there, I was like ‘We’ll see how this goes,’” said Lillard of the draft, which was held just an hour prior to tipoff. “They talked about not wanting to be last and stuff like that but I honestly wasn’t tripping. But when (Antetokounmpo) picked me first I was like ‘Cool, I guess I get to be the number one pick for once in my life.’”
The selection paid off, with Lillard posting 26 points on 9-of-21 shooting from the field and 8-of-20 shooting from three -- he made one three from behind the halfcourt line with the rest coming well behind the three-point line -- four assists, three rebounds and three steals in 23 minutes.
“They was telling me to shoot,” said Lillard. “I already had my mind made up that I was going to shoot a couple of them anyway. But it was like four or five different times where I was dribbling up and they was just like ‘Shoot it! Shoot it!’ I think some of the guys get a kick out of me being able to shoot it regular from halfcourt.”
Though “the guys” aren’t the only people in the arena who were delighted by Lillard’s range. Throughout various All-Star events, Lillard, who went to school roughly 35 miles from Salt Lake City in Ogden, UT, was regularly one of the most celebrated players at the NBA’s yearly exhibition, getting some of the loudest ovations of the weekend whenever he was announced or did something of note.
“It felt great,” said Lillard of the response. “Each time that I was introduced or they called my name out, just to hear the crowd, you would have thought it was a game in Portland or Oakland or something. I felt the love all weekend. With everything I did, not just basketball events but the appearances and everything, I felt the love so it’ll be an All-Star Weekend that I won’t forget.”
With a win Sunday night -- Lillard now has a 4-2 record in NBA All-Star games -- and a Three-Point Contest trophy to add to his case, Lillard’s seventh All-Star appearance goes down as his most successful thus far.
“It was a great weekend,” said Lillard. “Being back here in Utah, winning the Three-Point Shootout, I got to take my son a lot of places with me and experience a lot of the things now that he’s finally old enough to understand and see what’s going on, being a part of another All-Star game, having fun playing in an All-Star game. It was a really solid weekend.”