With much due respect to the legacies of Vince Carter, Jason Richardson, and Nate Robinson, the NBA 3-Point Contest has become the premier event of NBA All-Star Saturday.

This year’s field includes a two-time champion in Damian Lillard, and I expect the veteran point guard to run the table on Saturday night.

Read on for my NBA picks for February 14. 

The 3-Point Contest has gotten increasingly complicated over the years, with new modifications added almost annually. Familiarize yourself with the latest rules before wagering on the event.

• Players are given 70 seconds to shoot 27 balls from five racks located around the arc.
  
  
• Four of the five racks contain four NBA game balls and one tri-colored "moneyball." The fifth rack contains five tri-colored moneyballs. Players choose in advance where they would like to have the Moneyball rack positioned.
  
  
• Regular game balls are worth one point, and moneyballs are worth two points.
  
  
• There are two additional "Starry Range" ball pedestals, one between racks 2 and 3, and the other between racks 3 and 4. These shots are 29 feet and 9 inches from the basket (six feet behind the arc) and are worth three points each.
  
  
• The order of the competition is determined by a random draw, except for the previous year's winner, who automatically goes at the end of the opening round.
  
  
• The three players with the highest scores in the opening round will advance to the championship round. If there is a tie to determine the championship round participants, a 30-second tie-breaker round will take place between the tied players.
  
  
• The order for the Final Round will be the inverse of the opening round scores (i.e., the player with the lowest score shoots first). If a tie occurs in the final round, a full 70-second tiebreaker round will be used to determine the champion.

Shooting 43.1% from deep in your rookie year warrants a bounty of praise. Doing so on nearly eight attempts per game turns Kon Knueppel into something far more intriguing for the Charlotte Hornets.

And by no means has Kneuppel cooled off of late. The sharpshooter has shot 45.7% in February while taking 9.2 threes per game over five games.

The biggest question for Knueppel may be how he handles the Los Angeles nightlife this weekend. Then again, he is only 20 years old.

Damian Lillard tore his Achilles on April 27 of last year, nearly 10 full months ago. His surprise return to All-Star Weekend should be less of a shock than it has been.

The Portland Trail Blazers veteran is a two-time 3-Point Contest champion, and including Lillard in this field adds a compelling storyline.

No, Lillard has not taken a shot in a game this season. Then again, this is not a game either.

Jamal Murray has spent most of this season single-handedly carrying the Denver Nuggets amid injury after injury after injury to the starting lineup, including some nagging worries for Murray.

It has been merely human nature that he has lagged a bit since Nikola Jokic returned to the lineup; Murray could finally relax.

But Murray has shot just 14-of-50 in his last six games, a 28% showing that should cause concern if thinking about backing the Denver guard this weekend.

A skeptic might wonder if Lillard will be rusty. The better thought is to expect Lillard to be peaking.

No one else in this contest has as much experience in it as he does, and no one else has circled this Saturday night as the highlight of their season. Achilles recovery allows for catch-and-shooting nearly from the start; players cannot jump early on, but they can shoot.

Lillard has been training for this contest for months. This is not simply a bet on a storyline; it is also a bet on value.

Best bet: Damian Lillard 3-Point Contest Winner (+450 at bet365)

Year	Player
2025	Tyler Herro
2024	Damian Lillard
2023	Damian Lillard
2022	Karl-Anthony Towns
2021	Steph Curry
2020	Buddy Hield
2019	Joe Harris
2018	Devin Booker
2017	Eric Gordon
2016	Klay Thompson
2015	Steph Curry

Larry Bird added to his legacy by winning the first three 3-Point Contests from 1986 to 1988 before retiring from the event with nothing left to prove.

A master of the mental arts, the "Hick from French Lick" famously psyched out his opponents in his final 3-point shootout by walking into the locker room and casually asking, "Who's coming in second?" 

The answer, as it turns out, was Seattle's Dale Ellis, who could only watch in awe as Bird cooly eliminated him in the final round while still wearing his warm-up jacket.

• Dirk Nowitzki (2006) and Karl-Anthony Towns (2022) are the only 7-footers to win the contest.
  
  
• No one had won the contest in back-to-back years since 2008, until Damian Lillard accomplished the feat in 2023-24.
  
  
• No one has won the contest on their own home court.

This article originally appeared on Covers.com, read the full article here