WNBA: Allisha Gray takes over All-Star Friday

The WNBA All-Star Game is on Saturday night, but Friday still features plenty of fun events. The main attractions were the Kia Skills Challenge and STARRY 3-Point Contest. Before the event, Aflac stepped up by providing a $55,000 bonus for the winner of each event. The WNBA also chipped in $2,575 for each winner.

It turns out all the prize money went to the Atlanta Dream’s Allisha Gray, who won both events and will be taking some hardware home, along with a grand total of $115,150; that’s a pretty cool night in Arizona.

Gray’s first win came in the Skills Challenge, when she defeated the Phoenix Mercury’s Sophie Cunningham in the final round. Cunningham set the time to beat at 34.2 seconds. Gray was able to just edge that out with a 32.1-second performance.

Before the main attraction of the 3-Point Contest, we had the first-ever USA Basketball 3×3 Challenge, where Team USA met the U23 Team. The competition wasn’t just a novelty; Team USA is preparing for the Olympics and wanted to use this as a tune-up for that competition. The four Olympians are the Dream’s Rhyne Howard, the Los Angeles Sparks’ Dearcia Hamby, former WNBA player Cierra Burdick and TCU’s Hailey Van Lith. The U23 roster featured Christina Dalce of Maryland, Morgan Maly of Creighton, Cotie McMahon of Ohio State, Lucy Olsen of Iowa, Mikaylah Williams of LSU and Serah Williams of Wisconsin.

Hamby kicked off the scoring for Team USA, and they quickly took a 5-3 lead. The U23 team settled down, and soon the game was even at 10. The U23 team took the lead at 13-11, but then Howard evened things for Team USA with a 3-point shot, which is worth two points in 3×3. Still tied at 15 with 93 seconds left, Team USA did just enough to get the win, with Howard hitting back-to-back 3-pointers to give Team USA the three-point win, 19-16.

In the 3-Point Contest, Gray scored 23 points and the New York Liberty’s Jonquel Jones scored 25 points to advance to the final round. Gray went first and scored 22 points. Jones gave her a run for her money with 21 points, falling just short by missing her final shot.

With these two victories Gray became the first player to win both the 3-Point Contest and the Skills Challenge. It was an incredible moment and a reminder for those who are new to the WNBA that there are a lot of highly-talented players that the casual fan might not have heard much about.

Gray has been a sensational guard since entering the league in 2017, but it’s never too late to appreciate someone’s talent and give them there flowers. On Friday, in front of all the biggest stars in the WNBA, it was Gray who shined brightest.