All star weekend is over with the West crushing the L-East 153-132 as Kobe won the MVP with a 31-5-6 night. He had some monstrous dunks and was cheered wildly. But as usual, the All-Star game was a sloppy, no defense, no chemistry, sometimes ugly affair. This had me thinking about the whole All-Star weekend. How good is it? How to make it better? I actually like the NBA All-Star weekend. I think it's a nice change-of-pace during a long season and it's good to see the skills competition, the 3 point shootout and even the slam dunk contest. The dunk contest is probably the most over-rated event of the Saturday. Gerald Green won it this year on what's now becoming an annual ritual. Somebody goes retro and pays homage to a legend from his team, wears his jersey and does their dunk from the 80's or whatever. 2 years back, Josh Smith started it by wearing Dominique Wikins jersey. Last year it was Nate Robinson jumping over Spud Webb. This year, Gerald Green pulled out Dee Brown's jersey and did his hand over the eyes dunk. He also jumped over Nate Robinson and finally a table to win the contest. Dwight Howard had an awesome dunk where he put a sticker at the top of the back-board. For some reason, this didn't get the high-score it deserved.
Some dunks are still awesome, but overall it's just not the show it used to be. In a league where probably 95% of the players can dunk these days, how big can the event really be? They had a stellar panel of judges this year with MJ, Nique, Dr.J, Vince and Kobe. Thats the other problem. I think Kobe and Vince along with D-Wade, LeBron and Josh Smith should be in the contest instead of in the judge's table. All the big names are missing the last several years and it has become an event for the rookie and second-year leapers. NBA seems to get top guys for the 3 point and the skills contest, but not sure why they don't do it with the dunk contest. You had LeBron, D-Wade, Kobe, Nowitzki, Gil etc. in the other 2 contests, but Dwight Howard was the lone All-Star in the dunk contest. Also they should something about missed dunks. Too many missed dunks suck the energy out of the event.
The race between Dick Baveta and Charles Barkley was the highlight of the Saturday night events. Chuck backed up his talk with an easy win. I thought he would lose for sure, but I guess once a great athlete, always a decent athlete. The slimmer, fitter-looking Baveta just could not get it done though he dove at the end as Barkely started showing off by running backwards. Seeing Baveta dive was awesome!
But at the end of the day, the biggest problem with the weekend is the All-Star game itself. Also the Rookie-Sophomore game. These games are pretty badly played, with no defense anywhere in sight, no chemistry between the players and guys trying to do too much. You see balls flying all over the place and but for the occasional dunk, there's no electricity in the game. Guys don't play hard and it shows. There were a lot of talk about how to improve the All-Star game on the day after, but the good thing was, some of it came from the players themselves. Chauncey Billups talked about it and I am glad he did. It's better than the media being the only one caring about it. A lot of these stars still talk about it like it's a great show and it's actually a good thing they don't play defense. Some guys in the media talked about making it a World-V-US game like they do it in hockey. There are a lot of international players in the NBA today, but it's still an American sport. The World would have a lot fewer deserving all-stars than the US team and it would take a lot of good all-star spots away from US players. I am not a hockey fan, but I would guess it's a lot more even in the NHL since hockey is essentially a Canadian sport with a lot of European stars as well.
So the US-V-World is a good idea, but that may not work. My idea to fix the game is simple. Throw money at it. Get 2 or 3 sponsors, make them pay 5 or 6 million each, call it the Verizon All-Star game, and the winner takes 12 million dollars with each player getting 1 mill. The losing team just gets the appearance fee. I don't care how rich you are, you want the million and that might make these players try harder.
So thats my solution for the All-Star weekend. In a nut-shell, more money for the winners and put the top super-star athletes in the dunk contest.
There were also other interesting stuff from the weekend. I loved the whole Shaq dance form the East practice session. That cat can move for a big, actually huge guy. It was funny to watch him dance, but he is good. Also, Kobe got a lot of love. Looks like Kobe's image has come a full-circle and is back on top again. They were comparing this to how he was relentlessly booed in Phily the last time he won the All-Star MVP. To be fair to Kobe, I think he is also genuinely a changed person these days. He is extremely nice with people and is rarely cocky or arrogant with a mike on his face. Now all he needs to do is win a championship and he'll be on top the Sports World. He is pretty close to top already. I also heard that Vegas looked like a zoo this weekend. Apparently it was bigger than the Super Bowl crowds in Vegas and big fight weekends. That surprised me. I thought this wouldn't be such a big event except for the celebrities. Super Bowl for instance brings 300,000 average fans to Vegas. I guess some people call the NBA all-star game the black Super-Bowl for a reason! You add up the celebrities, their entourages and the fans, it becomes huge. Apparently the traffic was really bad and Nowitzki almost missed the 3 point shootout!
Of course there was the obligatory police trouble with 2 shooting incidents, one in the MGM Grand parking lot and the other at a strip club. Apparently the Titans problem-child Pacman Jones was involved in the strip-club incident. He and rapper Nelly were at the joint and Pacman started throwing thousands of dollar bills at the stage. woman started fighting over the bills and eventually somebody shot at somebody. Now they are saying Vegas may not even want the all-star event anymore!
Interesting games on the board for Feb 20-th (Tuesday)
Phoenix @ LA Clippers - Will Nash play? Can the Suns start the second half on a winning note?
Denver @ San Antonio - Spurs are back at home and Denver would love to beat them to start this stretch.
Minnesota @ Washington - Minnesota needs to beat good teams on the road if they are to become a real playoff team.
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