All Star Dunk Contest

It wasn't that what I saw was amazing. It was that the dunks were unbelievable. Not unbelievable in the sense that we normally use it. I mean in it was unbelievable in the sense that I literally couldn't have thought of some of the dunks that were pulled off.

All totalled Dwight Howard, the eventual winner, puled off four dunks. Every one of them would have been a winning final dunk in most years of the contest. Though it is good he brought them this year, because he needed all of them. Gerald Green had a final dunk type of performance on all but one dunk.

Dwight Howard Round 1 Dunk 1

• Howard came from behind the glass bouncing the ball of the backside and coming under to dunk the ball.

Gerald Green Round 1 Dunk 1

• Green had teammate Rashad McCants place a cupcake with a lit candle on the back of the Rim. Green than ran up, catching the ball in mid air from McCants, blew out the candle and thendunked the ball without disturbing the cupcake.

Dwight Howard Round 1 Dunk 2

• Dwight Howard stripped off his Magic uniform to reveal a superman undershirt. He then put on a red cape. He took off without the ball from mid court and flew from just inside the freethrow to catch the ball in mid-air. He may have made it to the basket to dunk, but he decided not to risk it by throwing the ball down from about 4 feet away

Gerald Green Round 1 Dunk 2

• McCants climbed to the top of a ladder and held the ball out. Green elevated to take the ball from him and throw it down windmill style.

At thie point the first round ended and I knew already this was the best dunk contest I have seen. Magic also made a funny comment regarding the scores the 5 judges were handing out. "3 of us have never dunked." 2 of 3 has to be himself and Karl Malone. I am guessing he meant dunked with style because Darryl Dawkins was the 3rd that he was referring to and the only dunk he knows is the backboard breaker.

Gerald Green Round 2 Dunk 1

• Gerald Green pulled off the Vince Carter style alley-oop between the legs and windmill in dunk. It was good but a re-do of a past duk wasn't gonna get it done, today.

Dwight Howard Round 2 Dunk 1

• Howard left from midcourt lobbing the ball off the bounce to himself in the middle of the key caught the ball with his left hand then threw it back of the glass and dunked with his right. It seems like I left out the part where he went down and jumped back up. That is because he pulled off all of that while still in the air.

Gerald Green Round 2 Dunk 2

• Green pulled off the same dunk he had for the first one this round. The big difference was he took his shoes off and signed them for the judges, then performed the dunk barefoot. Darryl Dawkins didn't think much of it though, he knocked the shoes off the judges table.

Dwight Howard Round 2 Dunk 2

• Howard took a nerf type Orlando Magic mini rim and stuck it to the backboard. He then placed the ball on top of it. He came from the side grabbed the ball from it's mini hoop and slammed it through the real hoop. Though it did take a few tries.

Howard ended up winning not only the 5 judges over, he won the text in fan vote 70/30.

NBA All-Star Jerseys

Has anyone seen the 2008 NBA ALL-STAR Jerseys. Seriously possibly the only thing worse than the throwbacks the Philadelphia Eagles wore last season.(Feel free to look at how horrible they are until I can get a photo of this years God awful jerseys up.)

This years All-Star Jerseys. Have an aspect of probably my favorite jersey. The all white jersey that several teams use. (I happen to like the Lakers Sunday white jersey the best, but that's just me)

Unfortunately it is only the white jersey for the front side. For some unimaginable reason they went with easily the worst jersey as the back half. The God awful Wizards gold jersey is how the back side looks. I can't imagine what drove them to this but for a marketing machine like the NBA it is inexcusable.

The All-Star Game is a Real Honor, Right?

On the heels of the least important of all of the All-Star games, the NFL's Pro-Bowl. I was just dying reading about the feeling Rasheed Wallace expressed upon receiving news he would have the "honor" of being selected to this years All-Star game in New Orleans.

"It's something that's good for my kids," he said, in almost somber tones. "I guess once I get older and get out of the game, this is something they can look back on."
Wallace had campaigned hard to not be selected, preferring the four days off instead. He already had made plans to spend the four-day break some place a lot more tropical than New Orleans.

Check out this nugget from that same article

How soon they forget. The names of Primoz Brezec and Walter Herrmann were misspelled on the Bobcats greaseboard before the game. Both were members of the team until Dec. 14.

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NBA All-Star Game Is All Wrong

I could rant on and on about the injustices of who is on the all star teams and who isn't. I am not going to. In reading up about this topic today I realized where the problems lie with this whole set up. The problems do exist and they are present both on the player side as well as the coaching side and yes some of it is even on us the fans.



As for the problems well lets start with the players. Upon finding out that his team mate Al Thornton hadn't been selected to the Rookie Sophmore game. Casell magnified the players slightly biased opinion with the following "There's a conspiracy going on. We must be in the state of Florida now. Did they watch that game, Jersey against the Clippers? Did they see Al Thornton that night?" Really, Sam. Do you want a second to pull that back. ONEGAME!? you want to know if they looked at one game. The simple fact that you pointed to one high performance as a signature game and all he really did was manage to lead for that one game. Well Sam, thats a sign the rest of his work really isn't that impressive.

As for the coaches, I don't know if they are right or if they are wrong but the perspective of the coaches became clear when Stan Van Gundy said "Shaq sort of is the All-Star game, sort of what the All-Star game is all about,'' Van Gundy, who coached O'Neal in Miami added. "It's celebrity and the people the fans want to see and everything else..." When you look at that it pretty much clears a lot of the decisions that they make as far as I am concerned.

As far as the fans culpability in all this. That is the white elephant in the room. The All-Star game is not about talent. It is clearly a popularity contest. So when the balloting comes out and we all start to debate why one guys play is better than the next guy and who got snubbed. We really need to settle down. Yeah it isn't always (or ever) a true representation of the best talent in the NBA but it is usually fun (less and less lately but I think this year we'll see a turn around). So let's just enjoy it for what it is.

Here is a great article on who made it and who got snubbed from True Hoop



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Trailblazers Use Tech Toys to Promote Brandon Roy

The Portland Trailblazers sent out 75 iRoys. What is an iRoy, you ask. It the their own iPod Nano that is pre-loaded with Brandon Roys clips and clips of people endorsing him. The Trailblazers are doing this in an effort to get thier man into the All-Star game. I love to see Technology creeping in to other aspects of our life. I think this is a great marketing scheme, now lets see if it works.

Here is an opposing view that I found interesting