John Wall wins "Battle of the Game Changers" competition. Everyone else loses.

With pressure mounting John Wall charges down the court and crosses up a slower defender, leaving him completely frozen. John calmly spots up and drains a three to win it all. John Wall has just become a champion. He takes his place at center court and receives his trophy as the victor. After gazing upon the much coveted award, John hoists it above his head to share his accomplishment with his fans. Overcome by the moment, John plants a kiss his newly acquired trophy as if to say "It's finally over, I made it."

Sadly I am not referring to the NBA Championship, and the trophy above John Wall's head was not by the name of Larry O'Brien. No, I'm referring to the Degree "Battle of the Gamechangers" competition that occurred during the Western Conference All-Star's open practice. It was one of the silliest, most poorly thought out competitions you're likely to ever see on national television.

The format was similar to H-O-R-S-E, if you took away all the fun and creativity and added a deoderant sponsorship. It seemed that the point of the competition would be the first athlete to make 3 shots, although this was very unclear. Curry and Wall alternated picking from six shots that were hidden by curtains with vague categories such as "Trick Shot #2", "Game Changer", and "Wildcard". Curry was given first pick, as if that was supposed to be some sort of advantage. The first shot selected was a shot sitting down at the elbow. The results were less than impressive.

.GIF Credit: Uproxx

In the biggest twist of the competition, Wall and Curry were informed that they would not be allowed to try this shot again. So instead, the score remained tied at 0-0. At this point, it was painfully obvious to everyone involved and watching that this was a farce. To her credit, Kristin Ledlow did a good job MC'ing the event. Degree clearly wanted there to be a level of "smack talk" going on, and Ms. Ledlow tried her best to facilitate that. She would turn to Wall and say instigative things like "does it bother you that Curry got more votes than you?" Unfortunately, it was hard to build tension when John and Stephen would dap each other after every shot and grin while clearly not trying to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Wall picked the second shot, which turned out to be the classic game changing move of bouncing the ball from the free throw line. Both competitors promptly bricked it:

.GIF Credit: Uproxx

Of course, neither competitor was allowed to try the shot again. The score remained a riveting 0-0. Tensions were high at the Garden. Just went I thought this contest couldn't get anymore nonsensical, Ledlow clarified that if neither player made this next shot it would go into a special tiebreaker round. So to recap, this competition had the potential to go into overtime with a score of 0-0. Yikes.

The final shot was to be a blindfolded free throw. You can probably guess what happened at this point:

.GIF Credit: Uproxx

BRICKS!

Welp, at 0-0 this one was going to OT. What would the tie-breaking and game-changing shot be? Ledlow informed us that the final shot would be chosen by a celebrity. Out came Michael Rapaport, who's according to the NBA (along with Spike Lee) the only relevant person from New York City. In an attempt to rile up the crowd (who might as well have been an army of crickets), he asked everyone to "wake these guys up" and while pointing at Wall and Curry said "they're not doing good so far". The crowd responded by simultaneously yawning and checking their phones.

After some deliberation, Rapaport picked the "Game Changer" category. The shot turned out to be a crossover pull up jumper. Disappointed in the difficulty of the shot John Wall exclaimed "that's an easy one!" Apparently, this rubbed Rapaport the wrong way. Rapaport then upped the stakes by telling John that he would have to hit the jumper from beyond the arc. As if to rub it in, he asked John "It's not so easy anymore is it John Wall?" Probably sensing that this contest had really gone off the rails, Rapaport also added that he would be defending the shot to add to the intrigue.

Curry went first and somewhat surprisingly, missed pretty badly:

.GIF Credit: Uproxx

Clearly, Rapaport's lock-down defense was a little too much for Curry to handle. John Wall was up next. With the pressure of coming away a champion as well as getting this strange little event over with, Wall had a lot riding on this shot. John didn't so much as juke Rapaport as much as just ignore him:

.GIF Credit: Uproxx

VICTORY!

In what is surely the proudest moment of Wall's young career, he received his trophy with grace:

We love you John, and we're glad you won this silly little competition. But seriously, don't ever do this competition again. At least then you won't have to deal with questions like these:

John Wall not rockin pic.twitter.com/Hw1HBg7vc2

— TDK (@OffDa_Leashh) February 14, 2015