'06 houston all star saturday night

yesterday i parked myself in front of the tv for the whole day and took in everything and a kitchen sink that TNT threw at me. everything from NBA planet to greatest dunk of all time, and of course the real shows of dunk and 3point contests. it was a well produced show but man were there full of odd things happening.

the first competition was the 3 players shooting from 6 designated spots on the floor, including a half court-er. right off the gate, before most people realized it, the san antonio team (kerr, tony parker and a wnba girl) were half way thru their spots already. it was capped by a tony parker half court bomb on his first try. even the announcers were caught off guard. reggie didn't even get to say he thought the SA team was his dark horse before the buzzer sounded. the rest of them was sad. lisa leslie missed 4-5 6' bank shots right off the bat. it was embarrassing. the LA team got back though, and kobe predictably nailed a half court JUMPER on his first take. i actually think that's about how far his range really is. the houston team and phoenix team were yet 7 seconds slower than the lakers, as houston screw up early on but t-mac nailed the half courter, while phoenix launching about 20000 half-couters before the wnba players made it.

the next up was skills competition. wade was gangsta, but who woulda thought steve nash would miss ALL of the freethrow line jumpers? simply unbelievable. and because of that (he missed a few passes too), he got knocked off the first round. the final round was between wade and lebron. lebron was pretty impressive (though he carries the ball everytime he dribbled), but wade was flawless. and he truly is Flash. just zoomed by everything, and nailed that jumper. nice.

the 3point competition was kinda wack again. dirk was cold in the first round but ray was on fire. everyone else are really just volume shooters (they just shoot a lot) or situational shooters (they shoot well only in the game flow) allen hit 9 straight at one point, and getting the first round high of 19 points. dirk on the other hand, had an after-buzzer money ball counted, which pushed him to the final round. wow the ref must been under the influence of mark cuban. speaking of which, dirk's teammate jason terry didn't even finish his last rack. anyway in the final round, dirk got hot and ray got cold. end of story.

this year's slam dunk was actually really exciting, there were so many "wtf" moments. i remember while a dunker was prepping his dunk, there was a shot of kobe mouthing "what the fuck" as a reaction. the first wtf came when josh smith asked someone to put a masking tape about 5 feet left of the top of the circle, and he backed the hell away to the other side of the court. everyone stood up and wondered if that's where he's jumping from. he lost his dribble on his first one, then on his second try he took off from free throw line and got a 2-hand slight double-pumped dunk. it was actually a really great dunk, but everyone was so confused about the tape that he only got 41 points for that. that pretty much set up a final of nate robinson and andre iguodala. but team AI had allen iverson bouncing the ball off the back side of the board, and the other AI jumping from behind the board and pulling off a reverse slam. then he ran to the tunnel. yup. the show should be over already. he shoulda won the dunk contest there.

with little help from the judge's confusion, there was a first ever dunk off, even though nate robinson, with all his amazing dunks, needed about 14 tries on each one to complete. his homage dunk over spud webb was nice, but AI shoulda one. nate tried a freaking impossible half court between the leg toss and almost got it twice. he made it when he moved to the 3 point line, but it still took about 10000 tries. wasn't as embarrassing as last year's birdman dunks, probably coz he's got the sympathy call of being 5'9". well for whatever reason the scoring was off and AI actually got one less point than nate and lost the title. that was wrong.

well maybe the league wants knicks to get some good news this year eh?