Looking Back On All-Star Saturday Night

******UPDATE: TYSON CHANDLER TO OKC, SAM CASSELL TO SACTOWN (FOR 2ND ROUND PICK).*******

A Moose Track

Hello, basketball blogger world. Coming off of all-star weekend, color me . . . unimpressed. But, before I give my thoughts on it, I'll give you all-star weekend bit by bit.

I'm going to start with Saturday night, because I didn't watch all of the Rookie-Sophomore game. So Durant just dominated, as I saw in the box score. Anyways, they said that all of it started at 8:30 . . . and it didn't. So me and my 5 friends were sitting in front of the TV, talking about how funky D-Wade was dressing. And why the hell does he have a band-aid with his name on it? Hmmmm.

Shooting Stars contest. Derek Fisher gets booed thoroughly, and laughs, winking at one of his teammates. Gotta love Fish for stuff like that. I'm rooting for the San Antonio team, because David Robinson, Tim Duncan and Becky Hammon are all awesome. I'm rooting against the Detroit team especially, because of Laimbeer. And they totally could've done better than Afflalo. I love him as a player, but why not Sheed/Tay/Rip/Iverson/Stuckey? Or even Kwame (haha)? Anyways, Detroit pulls it out. Barbosa wasn't going to hit any half-court shots flat footed anyways.

Anyways, the skills competition starts, and we make our picks. Everyone in the room is rooting for Devin Harris, except for me, who chooses Rose. Rose runs roughshod over the competition, but he couldn't have done it in a more boring fashion. He wasn't hustling, he was just going through it smoothly--until the end. That man threw down the 180 pump, and we were stunned. We were all like, "Did he just do that?!" Because, you know, it's the skills competition.

Harris did well, Rose did well, Williams did all right . . . but Tony Parker was disappointing. He was my pick to win it. That man is, arguably, of course, the most skilled man in that group with a ball in-game, but then he gets to the stage in all-star weekend and couldn't make the cut. So, at the end of the skills contest, I'm already slightly bored because the commercial to material ratio is at about 6:1.

Three point contest. We hear all of the judges talking about how Kapono is in a whole different league than all of the rest of them, blah, blah, blah. We all pick Kapono to win, except for my one friend, who really likes Daequan Cook for some reason. None of us were rooting for Kapono, but we all thought he'd win. I was going for Roger Mason, but I don't remember who everyone else was going for.

The three point contest was . . . well . . . where the hell was Ray Allen and Eddie House?! As in, nobody did very well at all. The highest score was, what, 18? And that was because Cook was on fire. None of the sharpshooters lived up to standards, especially Kapono, who was the hands-down favorite to win it. We were just waiting for the dunk contest.

Commercial. They come back, and who do we see? We see Kevin Rudolf singing "Let It Rock", even though he can barely do it. I leave the room out of embarrassment for the league, and then I come back when it's over. Not really. But it was embarrassing. OK, the dudes are introduced. Cheryl Miller goes to midcourt and takes out Howard, asking, "So, what are you going to do tonight?" Howard replies, calmly, "I don't know." I laugh, and she says, "Well, you should probably come up with something." He says, "Yeah, maybe." Dwight is one of the should-be-most-liked dudes in the L.

The room picks Robinson, although we all think that Dwight is going to win it. JR with the first dunk. Nasty. Nothing special, just he threw down hard. Enough for us all to go "Oooooh." Rudy takes off his jersey to reveal this dude Martin, the first Spanish player in the NBA. Nobody knew who he was, but it was good. Behind the back, off the glass, throws down. Very, very nice. I was surprised at how good it was. But, I did vote for Fernandez daily for over a month, so I got what I wanted, I guess.

Time for Nate. Robinson comes out with a nice dunk, with me still laughing at how short he is. Just a question here, but is Nate really 5-9? If he's listed that low, he's probably shorter than that. Kind of like Dustin Pedroia (who's actually 5-6, MVP!). It was very good. Dwight Howard comes out. We lean closer, waiting to see what Dwight comes out with. Ehhhh. It was OK. Nice dunk, but 50 points? Nahhh.

Next round. JR Smith put us all to sleep after he tried the dunk about a million times, changing it a bunch. It was annoying, and not all that great of a dunk. It was OK. Then comes Rudy, bringing out Pau Gasol. He really stressed the Spanish thing. On the first attempt, he missed, of course, but that just built the adrenaline. I thought, That dunk, if landed, would be just sick. Of course, it took them 11 tries (Pau's fault) but at the end, when he did land it, it was nasty. It was truly a great dunk, the air he got was great, all of it was nice. Of course, because the judges don't want to vote him higher than Nate or Dwight because they want to see what they can do, they don't give him as much points. Rudy got shafted. Sorry, Mr. Fernandez.

Nate's next dunk, jumping off of Wilson Chandler. Pretty good, but it kinda defeats the purpose. I mean, if a five year old gets the cereal from the top drawer with a step-stool, did he really get it? Exactly. Something to think about. A good dunk nonetheless. Howard comes out. Goes into the phone booth. I get excited. Comes out with the cape, but was the skin-tight jersey really necessary? Methinks not. Clever stuff, though. Jameer comes out to help. Jameer! To hell with the surgery, I wanna help Howard. Anyways, they get a hoop to 12 feet. He takes it off the backboard and dunks easily. 12 feet! That was crazy stuff, if not flashy.

Nate and Howard are left. Robinson comes out wearing all green. I am confused. But then I'm not. Kryptonite. KryptoNATE! He pulls off one of the greatest dunks that I've seen outta that lil' man, great stuff. Howard followed it up with an almost free throw dunk, like Dr. J. But, it wasn't original. Good, but, ehhhh. Nate brings out a green ball. Howard stands in the paint . . . I say, "No, he won't do that."

He did.

It was impressive when he jumped over Spud Webb. But Spud was 5'7". Howard is 6'11". Nate jumped 14 inches over his own height. I know, technically he didn't because he did a mid-air split, but he barely touched Howard. That was just nasty. Props to Howard for letting him be a prop in his own defeat. He caps it off with a slightly in-your-face Crank That dance. We rush to the computer to get Nate the votes, because that was too good to be true.

Howard breaks off his dunk, which was good, but it couldn't live up to Robinson's stuff. Howard lost by 2%, and you can tell that he isn't happy about it. Great effort, Dwight. Sick dunks, from all of them. In the end, All-Star Saturday was all right. Worth those last couple of dunks, all right. Best commercial? The Barkley-Wade-Howard one. Great sense of humor from all of them. And, of course, "EAT THE HEAD!"

As for HORSE, ahem, GEICO, I didn't watch. I couldn't find it. It wasn't part of all-star weekend, so I couldn't find it online. I saw the highlights though, and it didn't look as good as it could've been. Durant can snipe, though. Anyways, there were my thoughts. Overall: Meh. By the way, these were done in a liveblog type of sense, and it wasn't: I wrote this up just now.

--Moose