As far as NBA All-Star Week competitions go, the league’s Taco Bell Skills Challenge is a relative newcomer after having been introduced for the first time at the 2003 All-Star Game. This year, there will be no Boston Celtics players participating in the 2024 Skills Challenge, however.
Still, it has had a decent number of Celtics players try their hand at winning the contest, though only one — a current Boston player, at that — has taken home the hardware. The event, which tests a player’s ball-handling, passing and shooting ability, is arguably both the hardest to succeed at, yet is also the least popular of the three major individual competitions of the various events held in the week’s festivities.
Let’s review the franchise’s history competing in the event.
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2012 - Rajon Rondo
Boston’s first entrant, Rondo replaced Stephen Curry in the event, and came in second.
2016 - Isaiah Thomas
IT appeared for the Celtics in his first year with the team, and was the runner-up as well.
2017 - Isaiah Thomas
The King in the Fourth tried again the next year, but would lose in the Semis.
2018 - Al Horford
Horford would be the next Celtic to enter the competition, but he’d fall in the first round to Joel Embiid.
2019 - Jayson Tatum
Tatum would try his luck in 2019, and would beat out Mike Conley, Nikola Jokic, and Trae Young to win it all — the sole Celtic to do so.
2020 - Jayson Tatum
Tatum would try to defend his title in 2020, but lost in the first round to Domantas Sabonis.
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