Team Pacers win Rising Stars Challenge, Haliburton falls short in 3-Point Contest

Day 2 of All-Star Weekend is over, and just like the first day, the Indiana Pacers were all over the festivities. Following Bennedict Mathurin's Rising Stars MVP on Friday, he, Tyrese Haliburton, and Myles Turner would try to make it two trophies for Indiana in the Skills Challenge.

As they were the host city this year, Indiana got their own team of the three Pacers players against the team of Trae Young, Tyrese Maxey, and Scottie Barnes (All-Stars) and the team of Victor Wembanyama, Anthony Edwards, and Paolo Banchero (#1 Overall Picks).

Prior to the contest, in the pre-game ceremonies, Shaquille O'Neal asked Myles Turner if he felt confident enough to guarantee a Pacers win in the Skills Challenge. Indeed, Turner responded with a full Charles Barkley-esque guarantee and also thanked Charles for the All-Star support, as Barkley was perhaps the biggest supporter of Turner getting a potential All-Star nod.

Fortunately for Turner, this guarantee ended up better than most of Barkley's, as you will see shortly.

In the first portion of the Skills Challenge, Team Indiana got off to a blazing start and won with ease. They were so far ahead, in fact, that Tyrese Haliburton felt confident enough to throw the ball between his legs off the backboard to himself for the alley-oop finish in perhaps the most spectacular dunk of his career, a dunk that would perhaps put him in contention for the Slam Dunk Contest later that night considering Jaylen Brown's later performance.

In the second round, which was the passing round, Haliburton and company initially tied with the All-Stars but won the following tiebreaker with a score of 92, narrowly beating out the 90 set before them.

In the third round, team Indiana unfortunately fell short of a sweep, losing the shooting round to the All-Stars, but won the tiebreaking half-court shootout after Tyrese Haliburton sank a half-court heave and gave the 'choke' signal to the All-Stars he just beat out, in a move akin to Reggie Miller's choke sign in the Garden, with Miller on commentary this time.

As a result, Team Indiana won the tiebreaker round and the contest as a whole, making that the second All-Star challenge 'won' by the Pacers, after Mathurin's Rising Stars MVP the night before.

The night would not be over for Tyrese Haliburton, however. Almost immediately after the Skills Challenge, Haliburton went straight into his second of three events in the weekend in the Three-Point Contest. Haliburton's first round was quite impressive as well, scoring 26 points, which placed him in a three-way tie for first place.

Since only two players were allowed to advance to the finals, Haliburton joined Trae Young, Damian Lillard, and Karl-Anthony Towns in a 30-second tiebreaker matchup.

Unfortunately, this is where Haliburton's night came to an end, as he only scored 12 points, which was comfortably beaten by everyone else, eliminating himself before the final round, which was won by Damian Lillard, who repeated as three-point champion.

While Haliburton was unsuccessful in his quest to go 2/2 on Saturday for himself and Indiana, the Pacers still showed out plenty on All-Star Weekend. Despite losing out on the three-point crown, Haliburton, Mathurin, and Turner each took home a trophy from the Skills Challenge, and Haliburton will be able to show off more of his skills on Sunday when he starts for the Eastern Conference in the All-Star game.