2024

 

2024 NBA All-Star weekend: Schedule, time, TV channel for Dunk Contest, 3-point shootout, Curry-Ionescu battle

The 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend is now just days away, with all the excitement set for Feb. 16-18 in Indianapolis. While Friday night's Rising Stars Challenge and the actual All-Star Game on Sunday are both interesting, All-Star Saturday Night and its array of events are always the most anticipated part of the annual showcase. That's no different this year, with a number of stars set to be in action.

Here's everything you need to know about the 2024 iteration of All-Star Saturday night:  

Skills Challenge

When: Saturday, Feb. 17 

Time: 8 p.m. ET (first event) | TV channel: TNT | Live stream: TNT app

Participants: 

The team format is back for the Skills Challenge, which will be contested between Team Pacers, Team Top Picks and Team All-Stars. There will be three rounds -- Team Relay, Team Passing and Team Shooting -- that challenge all contestants in different facets of the game. 

The winning team in the first two rounds will receive "100 Challenge Points," and the winning team in the third round, the shooting competition, will receive "200 Challenge Points." At the conclusion of all three rounds, the team with the most points will be crowned champion. In the event of a tie, those two teams will compete in a halfcourt shooting contest, with the team that makes a shot from halfcourt in the least amount of time declared the winner. 

Odds: Top Picks +140, All-Stars +180, Pacers +180

3-Point Contest

When: Saturday, Feb. 17

Time: After Skills Challenge (Approx. 8:45 p.m. ET) | TV channel: TNT | Live stream: TNT app

Participants: 

The 3-Point Contest remains largely unchanged since its inception. There are five racks set up in five spots around the arc with five balls each. Four of the racks have four regular balls worth one point and one money ball worth two points, while one rack has five money balls. In recent years, two long-range shots worth three points have been added to the mix. 

In the first round, each contestant will have 70 seconds to make as many shots as possible, and the top three scores will advance to the championship round. There, those players will shoot again under the same rules, with the highest score in the championship round named the winner. 

Odds: Lillard +375, Haliburton +425, Young +500, Beasley +650, Brunson +700, Towns +800, Mitchell +800, Markkanen +800

Steph vs. Sabrina

When: Saturday, Feb. 17

Time: After 3-Point Contest (Approx. 9:45 p.m. ET) | TV channel: TNT | Live stream: TNT app

Participants: 

A special event has been added to the mix this year, and will feature Warriors legend Steph Curry and reigning WNBA 3-Point Contest champion Sabrina Ionescu, who set the highest score of all-time last summer with 37 points. The two elite shooters will go head-to-head in a one-round battle under standard 3-Point Contest rules. 

Odds: TBD

Dunk Contest

When: Saturday, Feb. 17

Time: After Steph vs. Sabrina (Approx. 10 p.m. ET) | TV channel: TNT | Live stream: TNT app

Participants: 

As usual, the Dunk Contest will close out All-Star Saturday Night, and the standard format is back. Each participant will get two dunks in the first round, which will be evaluated by five judges. The minimum score a dunk can receive is 40, and the maximum is 50. The two dunkers with the highest combined scores in the first round will advance to the championship round. 

There, each dunker will again have two dunks to show what they can do, and the player with the highest combined score in the championship round will lift the trophy. 

Odds: McClung -190, Brown +420, Toppin +600, Jaquez Jr. +650

‘The 2024 Oscar Nominated Short Films’ Review: Small Running Times, Large Themes

The Oscar-nominated short films are being presented in three programs: live action, animation and documentary. Each program is reviewed below by a separate critic.

Whatever your takeaways from the live action section of this year’s Oscar-nominated short films, a good laugh is unlikely to be among them. Suicide, abortion, bereavement, discoloring corpses — they’re all here, in a deluge of downers that only the Danes (and, depending on your tolerance for extreme preciousness, Wes Anderson) can be trusted to alleviate.

Those Danes, though! In Lasse Lyskjer Noer’s magnificently morbid comedy, “Knight of Fortune,” two grieving widowers bond over toilet paper and the trauma of viewing a loved one whose flesh — as warned by a pair of ghoulish mortuary attendants — might be the color of a banana. Although, bathed in the sickly spill of the morgue’s fluorescents, no one’s complexion here is exactly glowing.

If “Knight of Fortune” is a gentle nudge to the ribs, Misan Harriman’s “The After” is a two-by-four to the gut — and not in a good way. Trafficking in the kind of forced sentiment that can break you out in hives, this handsomely shot movie, featuring a garment-rending David Oyelowo, follows a London ride-share driver in the wake of a shocking personal tragedy. A trite, bullying soundtrack herds us toward the histrionic climax of a film that doesn’t trust us to get there on our own.

More restrained, and infinitely more resonant, “Invincible” observes the final 48 hours in the life of a 14-year-old boy (Léokim Beaumier-Lépine) as he struggles to corral his emotions and earn release from a center for troubled youth. The acting is impressive and the direction (by Vincent René-Lortie, drawing from a painful real-life memory) is bold and intuitive. Subtly intimate photography by Alexandre Nour Desjardins does much to enhance a movie that understands when it comes to emotions, less is often more.

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