Winners and losers from WNBA All-Star 3-Point Contest, Skills Challenge: Sabrina Ionescu outduels Allisha Gray

The WNBA 2025 stars weekend took a good start with New York Liberty Sabrina Ionescu star making history in her return to 3-point competition. She jumped last year’s competition after winning it in 2023, but Friday, she became the second WNBA player to win the trophy several times.

The Allisha Gray of Atlanta Dream marked history last year by winning both the skills challenge and the 3 -point competition. But even if she was a finalist in the 3-point competition this time, she returned to her house empty-handed. The New York Liberty swept Natasha Cloud winning the skills challenge by advancing the guard of Seattle Storm, Erica Wheeler.

There is still much more action to do this weekend with the star match which takes place on Saturday. But for the moment, here are the winners and the losers of the Friday festivities.

Winner – Sabrina Ionescu rebounds

During her trophy presentation, Ionescu stressed that the last time she was at a star event in Indianapolis, she lost a close competition of 3 points against the NBA star, Stephen Curry. She used it as a motivation because she felt that she had to redeem herself. It was also a good way to prove that his 3-point shot did not take place anywhere when Iioneescu turned a career at 31.1% beyond the arc this season.

Ionescu has joined the quadruple winner Allie Quigley as the only WNBA player to win the competition several times and she now has the two best scores. Ionescu established the record of the WNBA and the NBA in 2023 with 37 points during the final round, and it raised the trophy of this year with 30 points.

It admitted that she felt a lot of pressure on Friday, but she quickly rocked her. In the first round, she showed a little rust in her first rack and missed more shots than during her entire final round in Las Vegas in 2023. However, Ionescu retaliated to obtain 25 points and move forward. The second round saw her caught fire with 11 consecutive shots, and yet she felt the need to apologize after the victory.

“Well, I’m quite disappointed,” said Ionescu during his post-match interview. “I feel like I missed a few easy that I could certainly have done, so I’m sorry for that.”

Loser – Allisha Gray cannot defend her titles

We can blame the chest passes for it, because Gray missed three in the first round of the skills challenge. This has slowed her considerably and she finished with a time of 39.4 seconds, which was not enough to go to the final turn.

“Girl, I couldn’t throw it in this circle for nothing,” Gray told A’ja Wilson after being disqualified.

Gray still deserves a lot of credit because she rocked the disappointment and almost redeemed in the 3 -point competition. She qualified for the final round with 25 points, the same number of points recorded by Ionescu. Gray had trouble finding his pace during the final round, but has always set up 22 respectable points.

Winner – Liberty makes a scanning

The Liberty has become the third WNBA team to sweep both 3 points competition and the skills challenge. San Antonio did it in 2009 with Becky Hammon and Sophia Young, and the dream realized it last year with Gray winning the two competitions.

Cloud participated in the skills challenge for the first time and proved that it could be the pressure clutch. She said to herself “do not smoke this lay-up” before making the shot that stopped the stopwatch at 36.4 seconds and presented Wheeller the title of finalist.

Cloud joined Ionescu as the only two liberty players to win the skills challenge, as Ionescu prevailed in 2022.

Winner – Sonia Lemon wins respect for Sabrina Ionescu

Lemon obtained the lowest scoring in the first round of the 3 -point competition with 19 points, but the recruit of Washington Mystics cannot be too disappointed with this score because in other years, it was sufficient to move forward.

Lemon always leads all recruits in 3 -point shots this season, and his performance has earned him respect for Ionescu. After the competition, Ionescu shared that when seated on the bench, she promised Lemon half of the price of $ 62,575 if she won.

“She was nervous and I was nervous for her,” said Ionescu. “I must obviously hold my end of the market. … It takes a lot of courage to be able to do this as a recruit and what she did. I was really proud of her.”