I’m starting to enjoy All-Star weekends/games less and less as I get older/more cynical. Something that used to be so great in and of itself is now nothing more than a glorified commercial with athletes trying to “be cool” with their dress (LeBron, please no more old lady button up sweaters and D-Wade those glasses aren’t cool and neither are your personalized band-aids that you don’t need anymore. Nelly thinks that’s played out), their style of play (sure, Kobe wasn’t gunning for the MVP by putting up 10 shots in a quarter) and what they say/do (nice dancing Shaq. Mark Madsen thinks that was stupid). I liked it when things were simple, the game started at 5 or 6 and the MVP went to players who played well, not those who make the biggest story lines.
Here are some other thoughts as I took in NBA All-Star Weekend 2009.
H-O-R-S-E is much more fun to play than it is to watch. In fact, watching Mike Brown stand in front of his 500 pairs of glasses, trying each one on until he had the perfect match for his suit would be more entertaining.
C-Webb and Kenny Smith were jealous of the participates. They were like the little kid no one would let play basketball with them yet showed up at the park everyday and cheered and coached from the sidelines.
They were the only ones jealous of Durant, Johnson and Mayo. Those three didn’t want to be out there after the first 5 minutes. Even the kids from Boys & Girls Club standing on the court were bored.
All this and I still watched the game of H-O-R-S-E, err, I mean G-I-E-C-O. I couldn’t help it. It was like watching fat people porn. You know it’s not good but you can’t help but watch because it’s still porn.
How come Michael Rapaport was on the TV every six seconds during the Celebrity All-Star game? Did his agent pay for that air time?
The Rookie-Sophomore Challenge may be the best thing to watch all weekend. I was at the bar and couldn’t hear LeBron’s commentating? How was it?
The Saturday Night festivities are awful. I don’t know what they can do to make it better but I’m pretty sure having anyone from the WNBA participating isn’t the way to go.
The theme of the season continued for the Cavs during the Skills Challenge when Mo Williams was robbed of the title by a ball boy who got in his way after he was paid off by Joey Crawford and David Stern.
The 3-point shootout may have passed the Slam Dunk Contest as the most over-hypedboring event. No one broke 20 in any of the rounds? Really? Those are the best shooters in the NBA? I would have rather watched Mark Price, Dan Marjele, Craig Hodges and Damon Jones (anyone else miss him?) in the thing than the guys I just watched.
The Slam Dunk was pretty boring, but not horrible. The judges went into it knowing Howard was going to get 50′s. His only good dunk was the off the side of the backboard one. Rudy Fernandez got robbed when he went Nate Robinson on everyone, but that dunk was still the best one of the contest.
So LBJ preliminarily put his name in for the 2010 slam dunk contest. Do you think he knows what preliminary means?
The All-star game itself… boring. It couldn’t keep my attention and I went to bed at halftime. The first half was so bad (how bad was it?), my brother and I were more intrigued with the E! THS on Mario Lopez. (did you know he dated Kelly when SBTB first started? And surprisingly, there was no mention of his work on the Animal Planet.)
Is there a more over played story line than Kobe and Shaq? Did you know they won three championships together and then hated each other? My goodness, Bonds, Bettis and Favre think that story line is over covered. But there’s no way Kobe is happy about sharing the MVP award with him. You don’t take 10 shots in the first quarter of an all-star game if you aren’t trying to win MVP. I really wished Kobe would have said something like that and/or punched Shaq during the presentation.
That’s it from All-Star weekend. It really made me miss the Pro Bowl.
(Goal for today: Not to see, hear or read a single thing about A-Rod’s press conference. So far, I’m successful.)
