2025 NBA All-Star Weekend expert picks: Trae Young is value play for MVP, Dunk Contest royalty prevails

The 2023 All-Star Game featured captains drafting teams. The 2024 event moved back to East vs. West. Now, in 2025, we’re playing a four-team tournament. What that says about All-Star Weekend’s broader, existential issues is a matter of debate. What it says about betting All-Star Weekend is to be very, very careful. These events keep changing because they’re not working. Betting on All-Star Weekend, to some extent, means betting on players who may or may not take the proceedings seriously.

I can’t tell you who’s going to try to win on Sunday. I can’t tell you how invested the Friday or Saturday participants are. But I can help guide you strategically through the minefield that is the All-Star Weekend betting market. While I will offer picks below for all of the major events, what is more important is the thought processes I’ll guide you through below. There’s no reliable way to pick winners on All-Star Weekend, but you can almost always at least find the right value.

Rising Stars

Right off the gate, I’m going with the biggest underdog on the board here. You can find Team Jeremy Lin at +600 odds at FanDuel. For those unfamiliar with the Rising Stars format, Lin’s team is comprised of G-Leaguers, while the other three teams (led by Mitch Richmond, Chris Mullin and Tim Hardaway) are built around high-profile rookie and sophomore players in the NBA.

So why am I taking Team Lin? Despite what I just wrote about the level of intensity varying between players, it’s a pretty safe bet that the G-Leaguers are going to take this thing seriously. They’re the ones who stand to gain the most through this platform, after all, as Friday’s winner will participate on Sunday against the real All-Stars, and unlike the players on the three other teams, their NBA futures aren’t nearly as certain.

If Victor Wembanyama was in this field, I’d be inclined to just take his team. He is playing on Sunday, however, and is sitting Friday out. After him, there just isn’t a single player in this field that I suspect to singlehandedly overwhelm the G-Leaguers. Sure, Team Richmond has the Thompson twins, but it also has Toumani Camara, Bilal Coulibaly and a true center in Yves Missi. Not a lot of shooting on that group, huh? If this were a real set of games, I might lean toward Team Mullin just because it has Zach Edey. The biggest G-Leaguer in play here is Leonard Miller, who is a rail-thin 6-feet-10. Edey is going to tower over Team Lin, but this is an All-Star event, so obviously, we won’t see a post-play exhibition.

No, in an All-Star event, we’re going to see dunks and 3s. That’s what this group of G-Leaguers, which includes No. 3 overall pick Reed Sheppard and two-time Slam Dunk champion Mac McClung, does well. They’re going to give us a Cinderella story on Friday to drive some narratives for Sunday.

Skills Challenge

This is the single event I consciously avoid every year. It’s utter chaos. The official tiebreaker is a half-court shooting contest. My actual advice is to avoid this event like the plague. If you insist, though, just ask yourself this: who do you trust to make open shots? Team Rooks is comprised of the top two picks in June’s draft, Alex Sarr and Zaccharie Risacher, both of whom have effective field goal percentages below 50. They’re out. Team Warriors includes Draymond Green. I’m not putting my hard-earned money on someone who shoots like he’s wearing a backpack. That leaves Team Spurs and Team Cavs. If you’re forcing me to make a pick it would be on the Spurs (+220), because Chris Paul and Victor Wembanyama are the sort of competitive maniacs who might just take winning this thing seriously, but, and I cannot stress this enough, this is the event to avoid.

3-Point Contest

The key to betting the 3-point contest isn’t figuring out who to bet. It’s figuring out who not to bet. Remember, the act of shooting a basketball is inherently random. It’s not as though Stephen Curry wins this event every year. So what are our value indicators? First of all, we can take Damian Lillard (+350) off the board entirely. Only Larry Bird has ever won this event three times, and Lillard has won it twice. Lillard has won the last two, but before him, nobody had won it consecutively since Jason Kapono. If you want to bet on a 3-peat, go for it, but I’m not doing so at favorite money.

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Jack Maloney

Here’s a strange trend to keep an eye on: outside of recent wins by Lillard and Curry, experience has tended to do more harm than good in this event lately. Karl-Anthony Towns, Joe Harris and Eric Gordon all have recent wins in their first tries in the event. Devin Booker and Buddy Hield both won in their second go-round. While I don’t necessarily think this means you should run to bet the first-timers, it does suggest there’s some value in surprising places. Our first-timers this year are Darius Garland, Cameron Johnson, Cade Cunningham and Norm Powell. I’m not taking Cunningham simply because nothing in his NBA history suggests he’s the same caliber of shooter as his competitors. Johnson at +750, however, represents a nice bit of upside compared to Garland (+500) and Powell (+550), so I’ll take Johnson as my pick here.

Dunk Contest

Finding Dunk Contest odds can be a bit tricky, so we’re borrowing some from Bleacher Report here. We only need to cover one player, though. Take Mac McClung at -220. That line represents implied odds of 68.75%. Now, ask yourself honestly: after having watched the last two Dunk Contests, do you think Mac McClung has less than a 70% chance of winning this thing? To me, the answer feels closer to 80%. He could lose. If voter fatigue exists for MVP, it probably exists for Dunk Contests, too. But we’re not there yet. McClung pops up in our NBA world once a year just to win these things. He’s Dunk Contest royalty now, and the judges are going to give him the benefit of the doubt that comes with that. The tie goes to McClung. I have a hard time seeing anyone beating him outright. I almost never suggest minus-money bets on single outcomes, but don’t overthink this one.

All-Star Game(s)

I’m going to go a bit unconventional here. Rather than suggesting a single pick to win the All-Star Tournament, I’m going to give an overall strategy. We’re not playing for a huge payout here. We’re playing the arbitrage game.

Take a look at the lines for the individual All-Star matchups. You’ll notice that while Team Chuck vs. Team Kenny is relatively even on the moneyline, Team Shaq is a -455 favorite over Team Candace in the other game. That’s because Team Candace is going to be whoever wins the Rising Stars Challenge on Friday. Now, I know we picked the underdog in that event, but when the real All-Stars take the floor, Cinderella’s slipper is going to get smashed. As lackadaisically as LeBron James tends to take All-Star Games these days, he’s not going to want to be upstaged by a bunch of rookies and sophomores. All-Stars don’t want to get embarrassed.

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Sam Quinn

So what can we do with that information? Well, you can get Team Shaq at plus-money odds on DraftKings (+135) to win the whole thing. So here’s what I’m proposing: grab that line now, ahead of time. Let the first two games play out. If Team Shaq gets upset by the Rising Stars, well, my whole plan was ruined anyway. If they indeed win that game, however, they are likely favored in the championship over either Team Chuck or Team Kenny. So just live bet the other side. If Team Shaq is indeed favored, you’ll have plus-money on both sides of the championship game for a no-stress win provided your units are balanced. You’re not trying to figure out which All-Stars are going to care enough to fight for a win here or which of these ridiculous rosters make the most sense. You’re just shorting the rookies and sophomores. Is it especially bold? No, but gimme a break, I picked the G-Leaguers to win Rising Stars.

All-Star MVP

Picking the MVP is tricky this year, given the three-team format. Normally, we’d say to always pick a starter. No reserve has won since Russell Westbrook in 2015. The tricky thing this season is that we don’t know who’s going to start. The NBA named 10 starters… but there are three All-Star Teams. That means 15 players will start, but more importantly, with less depth, everyone is likely to play more. Therefore, we probably have to table the starter rule. 

That’s especially true, given the untimed nature of these games. We’re playing to a target score of 40, which is a pretty small sample. That means that the winning team will finish this tournament with 80 total points, so all it will take to win this thing, in all likelihood, will be a few hot stretches. That suggests we should lean towards scoring guards. History is on our side there. Since 2010, the only two big men to win All-Star MVP have been Anthony Davis and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Otherwise, it’s all perimeter players.

So how do we whittle it down from there? The obvious pick would be Stephen Curry at +550. He’s the hometown hero this weekend, and he plays for Team Shaq, so if you assume, as I have, that no veteran All-Stars are going to lose to a Rising Stars team, you can feel relatively safe in assuming that he’ll at least reach the final. I just can’t get there on a +550 favorite in such a wide field. I want better odds.

Fortunately, there are two longer shots that make a lot of sense. Team Chuck, built largely around international players, is largely comprised of big men. There are only three perimeter players on the team: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (+800), Donovan Mitchell (+2000) and Trae Young (+4000). I’m not crazy about Mitchell. Outside of his 40-point explosion in 2023, his All-Star history has been quiet. But Gilgeous-Alexander scored 31 points as a starter a year ago, and as the regular-season MVP favorite, all eyes will be on him. Young is the value play. He has a chip on his shoulder after not getting selected to the All-Star game initially, and he’s tailor made for the All-Star format with his deep 3s and flashy passes.

Those would be my two favorite picks on the board, but I’d want to round out a portfolio with a Team Shaq pick just to cover my bases. Curry is out. So is James, given his recent All-Star history. How about Damian Lillard at +1500? He’s scored at least 26 points in his last three All-Star Games, so we can safely say he takes the proceedings seriously. He’d be a repeat winner, something the All-Star Game hasn’t had since Westbrook did it in 2015 and 2016, but as the format has changed so drastically, that’s not something I’d pay much mind. Between Lillard, Gilgeous-Alexander and Young, we have three of the tournament’s best “get hot over a short period and steal the show” candidates on our bingo card.