Utah Jazz: Joe Ingles Confirms He Wasn’t Invited to 3-Point Contest

Utah Jazz sharpshooter Joe Ingles revealed on Twitter last night that he indeed wasn’t invited to the NBA All-Star Three-Point Contest.

The truth is out, people. Of course Utah Jazz fans all suspected foul play when we learned that Joe Ingles – a 43.9 percent three-point sharpshooter, the third best in the league – wasn’t announced among the finalists for the NBA All-Star Three-Point Contest. In fact I, myself, was quick to report on his absence from the list, openly referring to it as a snub.

However, there were also earlier reports that Ingles wasn’t all that interested in participating and was more looking forward to the All-Star break so that he could spend time with his family. This helped soften the blow about Ingles’ snub as it appeared he would be where he wanted to be for the All-Star break.

In fact, many wondered if perhaps he was invited but decided not to pursue it. Perhaps the NBA had planned to include Ingles in the three-point contest but his priorities were elsewhere.

Unfortunately, if that was the mindset you had adopted to help you get over the fact that we won’t get to see Slo-Mo Joe running from rack to rack in the three-point contest tonight, I’m afraid you’re about to be very disappointed. If you want to stop reading now and spare yourself the pain, I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest.

Because last night on Twitter, Joe Ingles revealed the ugly truth. No Three-Point Contest invitation was ever received by the Aussie dead-eye.

The truth was unearthed as a bold Twitter user asked Joe the question that had been weighing heavily on all our minds:

To which Joe replied in matter-of-fact and devastating fashion:

As one would expect, the Utah Jazz fan reaction was a mixture of anger, sadness, shock and surprise. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a contingent of the Utah faithful begin marching on the All-Star events in New Orleans with their torches and pitchforks at this very moment.

Perhaps the person in that fourth and final tweet above that I’ve included here is on to something, maybe it was the good looks. But whatever the case, now that we know that Joe Ingles was indeed simply withheld an invitation, I’d say it’s officially safe to consider it a true snub and not just a hypothetical one.

As I mentioned in my previous coverage of said snub, it was a little surprising that Ingles holds a better three-point percentage than every player that will be participating tonight but didn’t merit an invitation.

Nevertheless, even though I have a feeling that Joe isn’t taking the snub too hard, hopefully he can use it as fuel to the fire to come back after the All-Star break and continue to light it up from deep and prove that he belonged in the mix.

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And in the meantime, us Jazz fans will have to live with just imagining how it would have looked to see Slow-Mo Joe battle the clock to try to get up enough shots to win the contest and with the satisfaction of knowing that the dead-eye Aussie will continue to hit those big threes where it really matters.

Yes, it’s a devastating blow to learn that the NBA simply overlooked Joe Ingles’ undeniably accurate three-point shot. But I’ll take him draining threes in the playoffs over the three-point contest any day.