In those brief seconds, it went beyond statistics. Probability was irrelevant.
It didn't matter that Timberwolves forward Kevin Love is shooting 34.8 percent from beyond the 3-point arc this season, the worst of any player competing in the NBA's Foot Locker Three-Point Contest. It mattered even less that few analysts gave Love even a mention among the legitimate contenders Saturday night in Orlando, less still that only one power forward, Dallas's Dirk Nowitzki, ever had won the contest.
With a score of 17 in the final tiebreaker, Love defeated Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant, who finished the round with 14, and won the contest outright. But what might have been a surprise to 90 percent of the country should come as little shock to Minnesota fans.
He's said it before, and he'll say it again, many more times before this season is over. Kevin Love thinks he has an edge in nearly any competition he enters, and with that razor-sharp focus, he just might be right.
"I'm ready to go," Love said before the contest. "I feel good out there. Who's to say what's going to happen when the lights turn on, but I feel confident."
All notions of logic slipped quickly out the turnstiles of the Amway Center as the players began their rotations around the basket. The two players with the highest 3-point percentages, Orlando's Ryan Anderson and Miami's Mario Chalmers, were the first two eliminated, and last year's champion, Miami's James Jones, remained along with Love and Durant. From the TNT announcers there were cries that Jones could repeat in his sleep, but again, predictions never rose to more than speculation.
One of the announcers' proclamations made a bit more sense, though. It was less a prediction than an aspersion; the crew joked that Love stepped up his performance because he was on national television, a rarity for a Timberwolves player.
It was a blunt statement, and it's true that few outside the upper Midwest get a chance to watch Love on a regular basis. All they see are the box scores and the double-doubles, only the lifeless numbers. They don't see the relentless energy Love plays with for 40-plus minutes each night. They're never caught off-guard by the intense calculation of his gaze or the raw confidence of his manner.
Love said that he practiced shooting Friday morning and again Saturday, and the player who took the court in Orlando was a far cry from the one who snatched balls off just one rack in Minnesota last week, as teammate Brad Miller hastily moved the rack from station to station. Because this is Kevin Love. Last week, 3-pointers mattered far less than his team's record going into the All-Star break. This weekend, they matter. Love is on national television. He is in the spotlight, and he is going to prove that he's earned every second of it.
So that majority of fans who know Love as nothing more than a set of numbers on an upstart team should take note. Winning the 3-point contest wasn't an upset for the forward. It was simply what he expected out of himself.
Less than an hour after Love's win in the three-point contest, rookie Derrick Williams participated in the Sprite Slam Dunk competition against Houston's Chase Budinger, Indiana's Paul George and Utah's Jeremy Evans. He was unable to get the Timberwolves their second consecutive contest win.
Williams approached the event with the utmost secrecy, never even confirming whether teammate Ricky Rubio would assist him on a dunk. In the end, though, Rubio took the floor twice, once to assist Williams with a toss in his second dunk, and again to attempt to lend a hand – in the form of a bounce off the backboard – in Williams's third dunk.
That third dunk was Williams's undoing. For his first, he arrived on the court with Timberwolves' mascot Crunch on the back of a red motorcycle, and he proceeded to dunk over that motorcycle. He completed that dunk and the next both on his second attempt, but it took him 10 tries to execute his third with a two-hand flush, a back-up dunk he executed in the waning seconds of his window.
In the end, it was Utah's Jeremy Evans who won the contest, with 29 percent of the fan vote.
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