All-Star Saturday

Because I'm "sick," I was able to skip church this morning. Church starts at 10:30. Know what else started at 10:30? All-Star Saturday. What a coincidence! I'm reminded of an episode of The Simpsons...the one where Homer becomes an astronaut. Anyway, here are my thoughts:

How does the Clippers' Walter McCarty wind up singing the American national anthem? I couldn't hear him, because the Korean announcers talked over EVERYTHING, but if McCarty is that good a singer, he should seriously consider quitting his day job.

Shooting Stars

What a novel idea: team a current NBA star with a legend and a WNBA (I haven't heard of it, either) player...it's always fun to see an overweight Magic Johnson...Steve Kerr looks like he could still play. A competitor should sign him, if only as insurance for the playoffs when their team needs a 3 with seconds remaining...Kobe was doing his "look at what a nice and jovial guy I am" routine. Boy, that gets old fast...TP, Kerr, and the girl wrapped things up early...Not mindblowing by any stretch of the imagination, but it was short and sweet. By the way, who decides which teams are in this thing?

Skills Challenge

All right, 3 superstars and up-and-comer Chris Paul (who gave him the lame nickname "CP3," by the way? HUGE missed opportunity there. He is and will always be "Prince Paul" to me, but I suppose that's too esoteric for your average fan). Man, Steve Nash can rack up in-game assists, but his passing here was about as accurate as Dick Cheney weilding a shotgun (or Jayson Williams, to be topical)...Dwyane, let's hope those missed Js aren't a sign of things to come, come May. Also, you know the difference between a layup and a dunk, don't you?...Lebron runs through all the challenges perfectly, then Wade, aka The Cold Vein, does the same in less time to win the contest. THAT was awesome. Afterward, Wade indirectly disses Paul and Nash by saying that the passes were easy. Cold. It is kinda ironic that two shooting guards ran over two point guards like that.

3-Point Contest

This was the most painful event to watch. I mean, all the competitor's were absolutely horrible. The highest score was 19, I think. Larry Bird must be turning over in his grave. Again, who decides who's in this thing? Doesn't Rip Hamilton have the highest 3-point field goal percentage in the L? Why wasn't he invited? Dirk Nowitzki ended up winning, but it was really like coming first in a spelling bee by spelling "horse" correctly. No excitement whatsoever. Plus, Dirk should have been cut in the first round after the money ball he sank at the end to give him 14 points clearly was released after the buzzer. I know it's just the 3-point contest and not the NBA finals, but there was $35,000 dollars at stake. I never thought I'd say this, but, of the 4 events, this was the worst.

Slam Dunk Contest

My and everyone else's money was on Andre Iguodala, but I expected Josh Smith to at least give him some competition. Dude sucked harder than drinking peanut butter through a straw, finishing last in the 1st round. What gives, Josh?...I'm of the opinion that the dunk contest should only be held every 5 years or so. There are only so many dunks, and even though it's a yearly thing, they get old pretty fast. Plus, there may be a curse on the contest. Look at some past winners: Vince Carter (morphed into a woman), Kobe Bryant (was arraigned for rape and consequently lost roughly 300 trillion dollars in endorsements), J.R. Rider (too many things to list), not to mention all the winners who faded into obscurity (do you remember that Cedric Ceballos was an all-star? Me neither)....Here's what really irks me about the dunk contest: player's get an infinite number of attempts, and no matter how many they miss, it doesn't affect their score. On the other hand, it was nice to see Nate Robinson pay homage to the sadly-missed Chris Andersen...At least, in Andersen's case, he was probably high at the time...Iguodala's 2nd and 3rd dunks were awesome (pantheon-level), but even their impact was slightly lessened because he missed his initial attempts at both. Plus, he really should have saved the best for last. That last "been there, done that" dunk was why he ultimately lost. Nate Rob's dunks were good, especially the jump over Spud Webb, but, similarly, his last dunk was nothing to write home over. And it took him approximately 75,000 tries to finally pull it off. I'm with the 2 AI's in my opinion that Iguodala was robbed. Nate Robbed.

Here's hoping tomorrow's All-Star game is memorable. I'll try to post some, uh, post-game thoughts tomorrow night.

Prediction: East 147, West 129 (Allen Iverson MVP)

Update: I know it's a fairly obvious play on words, but I just wanted to mention that my use of the term "Nate Robbed" was posted a full 2 hours before ESPN's Matt Wong used it here: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/allstar2006/news/story?id=2335818.