KD won’t play in the All-Star Game due to injury, and there’s apparently a chance James Harden might not be a Net come next Sunday – but Brooklyn will have one representative at All-Star Weekend for sure.
On Tuesday night, the NBA announced that Patty Mills is one of eight players selected to take part in the 3-Point Contest, which will be held on Feb. 19 as part of All-Star Saturday Night.
Mills joins Memphis’ Desmond Bane, the Clippers’ Luke Kennard, Chicago’s Zach LaVine, newly-minted Pelican CJ McCollum, Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns, Atlanta’s Trae Young, and Toronto’s Fred VanVleet in the competition, a group that will produce a first-time winner.
Defending champion Steph Curry will not participate, and five of the eight entrants are first-timers; only LaVine (2020 and 2021), McCollum (2016 and 2017), and Young (2020) have competed in the event before.
Mills is the fifth Net to participate in the 3-Point Contest – he joins Drazen Petrovic (1992), Anthony Morrow (2012), Joe Johnson (2014), and Joe Harris (2019 and 2020) on the list – and looks to become the second winner, behind 2019 champ Harris. Per Nets PR, Mills is also the first Australian native to be selected to participate in the 3-Point Contest.
He represents Brooklyn in the midst of a stellar first season here, as Mills was fourth in the NBA with 172 made three-pointers – already a career-high for him, and fifth in Nets single-season history – and ninth in three-point percentage (42.5 percent) as of Tuesday, as well as the league leader in catch-and-shoot three-pointers (140). He also leads the Nets in offensive rating (113.5) and plus/minus (+158).
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