NBA All Star Game

I watched about half of the second quarter and the second half of the game. The All Star Game just isn't must see TV anymore. ESPN Classic ran some old All Star Games yesterday, I caught the '93 game and DVRed 3 others. In the '93 game both teams wanted to win, bad. They were playing real basketball, entry passes into the post, pick and rolls, and DEFENSE. On one play in particular Michael Jordan went flying through the air to tip away an alley oop John Stockton threw for Charles Barkley. That was entertaining.

A few thoughts on the game:

First and foremost, those were the ugliest uniforms I have ever seen. Why have jerseys with different colors on the front and the back? And why have the front of one jersey so closely resemble the back of the other jersey? This was actually hard for me to watch, in transition I had a lot of trouble determining who was the East and who was on the West, it was awful (check picture 6, yes, they're on different teams). Bad decisions all around.

Maybe Jason Kidd shoots 36% from the field, but he can still pass.

And Chris Paul was even more entertaining. (Can we pencil in Chris Paul for the next 12 All Star Games please?)

The East team sure is happy Ray Allen showed up, which I was advocating for the whole time. I was hoping Ray would win the MVP with his efficient scoring (14 points in the final 3:14), but LeBron was the more logical choice, he filled his stat sheet.

LeBron James is not used to playing with good teammates. Ray Allen motioned to him to play a little pick and roll game and that took about 5 seconds longer to set up than it should have, and there were several outlet passes to Kidd that LeBron grabbed just because he's used to it.
If Kevin Garnett was this excited to root for the All Star Game, it's no wonder he spends the games he misses in the trainer's room.

After seeing Yao Ming bomb two 3s, why can't we have a worst 3 point shooting contest? Get Yao, Tyson Chandler, Dwight Howard, and Shaquille O'Neal bombing threes in a contest. You're telling me you wouldn't watch this?

Chris Bosh had decent stats (14 points 7 boards), but to me he looked very out of place, like he didn't deserve to be there (holding the ball to make post moves with 2 seconds on the shot clock).

The East buckled down in the end and played defense like they wanted to win, rotating, trapping the post, and it was very entertaining. Why can’t they play that hard for the entire game? You have a full bench of stars, only the biggest stars will play 30 minutes, why can’t they push it for one game. Extend the All Star break by 2 days and let everyone run.

Quick thought about the Dunk Contest: Why doesn’t LeBron want to do it? It’s only a joke because people like him don’t do it. How can you grow up idolizing Jordan and not want to win it? MJ was doing the dunk contest in his fourth year in the league. That said, the cupcake dunk was the most creative (and even caused Kenny Smith to practically drop an F-Bomb), sadly Gerald Green didn’t have anything for the final round, and Dwight Howard was prepared with 4 great dunks.