Ten Things I learned while watching All Star Weekend

Honestly, its been ages since I sat myself down through the entire All Star Weekend and forced myself to watch it.  Here are ten things that I learned while watching All Star Weekend:

1.  Tyreke Evans is a beast, but he was smart to share that award with DeJuan Blair. Blair had 22 points and 23 rebounds.  He played more minutes than anyone in the game for a reason.  In these All Star contests, the coaches give every guy an opportunity to play but give the hot hand most of the playing time.  Evans is a spectacular player but Blair is the guy who really stole the show.  Its amazing what guys with a chip on their shoulder can do?  How do teams like the Spurs end up with guys like this?  Isn’t it easy to see that his work ethic was extraordinary?  The first round is littered with talented blue chip prospects you hope will mature into great players but the second round is filled with players you need to score high on the “i’m going to work my butt off in the gym to prove I belong on an NBA roster” scale.  Blair is described as many as one of the most likeable and personable people you will meet which of course is always a plus and he was selected with the 37th overall pick in the second round by the Spurs.  When I heard he went in the second round, I knew that whatever team selected him would have a steal and of course it had to be the Spurs.  He’s going to be a double double machine who is not afraid to use his wide frame and bulky build to punish opponents down low which he showcased in the Rookie-Sophomore game during all star weekend.  Tyreke may have walked away with the MVP award, but everyone walked away wowed by DeJuan Blair.

2. The DUNK contest should no longer be the premiere event of ASW, unless they get a major name to participate. There’s an APB going out to LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and any other basketball player who fancies himself a great dunker.  Since Vince won it, I’ve never been really wowed by a dunk contest.  Every year the originality has been sucked out of it by the fact that there are so many “we’ve seen this done” dunks repeated and worse missed a few times and then done.  Nate won it for the third year in a row but does it really matter?  That’s how bad the Knicks are, even when their players are winning awards its for pointless things like the dunk contest.  I Facebooked on Saturday that perhaps I was spoiled as a youngster watching the likes of Michael Jordan, and Clyde Drexler and Vince Carter participate in the dunk contests.  Don’t ever expect to see that kind of star power happen today.  Imagine if LeBron were to lose the dunk contest? How hard would it be for him to have the tape of that dunk contest mysteriously disappear?  Probably not that hard.

3. PRIDE is lacking. Which naturally leads us to the problem with All Star games in general.  Really there’s no incentive for the players to put on a show other than pride.  You know when pride kicks in?  with about 7 minutes left in the All Star game.  These guys don’t compete hard against each other.  Familiarity usually breeds contempt but not in this case.  Bill Simmons, the page 2 writer, made a good point a few years ago when he said that a lot of these guys grew up together.  They played on AAU teams and in summer travel leagues.  They stayed with each other.  Got their first blackberries together and have been texting each other box scores since they were 13.  So how do you expect two friends to be super competitive with nothing on the line?  You can’t.  Not even for normally hyper competitive guys like LeBron and Carmello and D-Wade.  Back in the day, Jordan and Magic and Bird all fought for alpha dog status.  It meant something to them because they came in as loners.  Imagine going to a conference and meeting everyone for the first time in a competitive setting.  You know no one.  You don’t owe them anything or have any link to any one there.  If you channel your normal hyper competitiveness into that room, you’ve got a bunch of highly talented guys trying to be “the man” for lack of a better term.  Now THAT would be sensational.  You don’t have that.
All Star games are not meant to do that but that’s the beauty of basketball.  The NBA is the only sport that can actually have an entire weekend filled with activities to showcase individual ability.  The 3 point contest, the Slam Dunk, HORSE (which as a basketball fan you have to LOVE, although it does need some minor tweaks), and skills competitions are all great ways for fans to see how truly athletic and gifted these guys really are at specific things.  No other sport can claim to have events that truly showcase the wide range of abilities like this.  I mean the NFL, if it were to make a big deal of those QB competitions and skills competitions may come close but it doesn’t so we can’t say that.  The NBA properly uses these events to showcase their talent.  If we raised the pot for the winners of some of these competitions or added a few wrinkles to some of the events, maybe just maybe players might give a damn but with so many outside factors and the globe more tightly connected than ever thanks to facebook and youtube and camera phones, players are more protective of their image and scared to fail because of the possibility that everyone will have the ability to see it in almost real time.

4. Craig Sager can wear normal suits, but his outfit altogether can’t be normal.  Has anyone in sports ever solely kept a career alive thanks to his wardrobe?  He mumbles when he talks, has the creepiest smile in America, and no NBA player feels comfortable enough to look him in the face when they talk.  Would anyone be surprised if we come to find out that his suits were actual human skin painted to those colors?

5. The NFL isn’t the only league in trouble. After the withdrawal of the NFL wore off, the attention quickly shifted to Dallas where David Stern was bombarded with questions about a possible strike looming in the NBA in 2011.  The Players Association apparently ripped to shreds the Owners latest proposal and are not willing to take a paycut to allow owners to have some breathing room as the economy recovers.  Its a tough sell for Memphis fans who really have no ties to their NBA team to sell out every night when their team is barely in playoff contention.  The problem has always been to put an NBA team where it fits.  Not where the guy with the deepest pockets are willing to spend on a team.  Putting a team smack dab in the middle of college basketball country will always be an epic fail and the people who love expansion don’t see that.  Developing a winner takes time and when you are expanding a recession will undoubtedly cause the team to take a hit.  Players have to accept the truth that the league is losing money hand over fist (the NBA is reporting an average of $200 million lost each year over the last 3), and guaranteed contracts will be impossible in the upcoming CBA.  Perhaps partially guaranteed contracts with long term contracts having an out after 3 seasons.  Who knows what kind of details need to be worked out but what we do know is that several teams are in the red and have been for a few seasons now and the CBA must be reworked to fix that.

6. Charles Barkley is by far the best pre game, halftime and post game entertainer in all of sports broadcasting. Since like I said, its been a while since i’ve solely concentrated on basketball, I forget how great it is to have a Charles Barkley around.  I imagine production meetings going on and Barkley walking in, then going to the toilet after about two minutes and sitting there for the duration of the meeting since you know Taco Bell offers you lots and lot, its especially good after you smoked lots of pot.  He walks out with toilet paper sticking to the bottom of his shoe (there’s no relevance to the rest of the comment but come on, you know that’s how it plays out) and he goes out there and totally wings the entire show.  He’s by far the only person with carte blanche to say whatever he likes on national television and rarely see anything more than a slap to the wrist for doing that.

The three best Charles Barkley moments from the All Star Weekend:

A. McLovin coming on to the set (I know he has a real name but I refuse to write it and if he knew what’s best for him, he had better embrace that name for the rest of his life).  Charles looked admiringly at McLovin, and not in a nice way.  He had finally found a guy that Kenny “the Jet” (the most overblown nickname ever by the way.  He was never that good to get a cool nickname like that) Smith and Ernie Johnson (white guys with black people names hall of fame) might look at as more ridiculous than Sir Charles (who by the way has my favorite mock nickname I’ve ever heard given to him by Hall of Fame sportswriter Peter Vecsey: Sir Cumference).  But of course what was unexpected was McLovin thinking the exact same thing about Charles.  He finally had the chance to be on stage with someone that people thought was on the same speed as him.

B. Charles Barkley’s funniest comment of the weekend: “you ever notice how gatorade doesn’t work on players who suck?”  Very true Sir Charles.  This was while you saw Nate Robinson take a chug from his gatorade bottle.

C. Barkley looking like a proud kid when David Stern gave him a compliment.  Look, even I get a little frightened when I hear David Stern speak but it was funny to see the oversized personality that is Charles Barkley address the commissioner in a slightly less demonstrative way.  Stern is an imposing figure for a small guy, but Barkley’s back pedaling and look of sadness when the commissioner gave Kenny Smith a compliment at the expense of Barkley and then paid Barkley a compliment two minutes later was about as revealing to you how scary Stern is and how much of a kid and crazy figure Barkley is.  You just never know with him.

7. I’m convinced NBA players are the least interesting people on the planet.  I had an interesting conversation this weekend about Dwight Howard.  Ever notice how we get all giggly about anything Dwight does and how we gush about his childish acts and get all gaga about it?  I realized why after about two David Aldridge interviews with Kobe Bryant and Dwayne Wade about how absolutely boring these guys really are.  They don’t even know how to formulate proper sentences.  OF COURSE DWIGHT HOWARD is funny, compared to most NBA players he’s Dave Chappelle. Dirk Nowitzki, God bless him, looked like the least comfortable man on the planet saying “everything is bigger in Texas.”  Its as if he had a cue card and was reading it monotone.  In fact he was walking off as he said it.  He wanted no part of the big stage.  Kobe Bryant always looks pissed off while being interviewed.  I hear LeBron James talk and I just wish he didn’t go to “Clyde Frazier teaches English 101”.  You know, using big words in the wrong context.  Meanwhile there’s only two superstars who I could see being a normal human being outside the court with their friends: Dwight Howard and Steve Nash.  I mean normal in the context of you or I behave with our friends.  I understand that stars operate on a different universe and different rules apply to them.  I would put LBJ on this list but LeBron falls short in one key area.  Amidst all the hype that surrounds him, all the commercials and everything else, looks like a guy that teammates naturally gravitate to.  Bill Simmons a few weeks ago talked about presence.  Jordan had the presence.  That being, the ability to make everyone in an arena or whatever setting they are, stop what they are doing and just watch a person’s every move.  What’s more, Simmons wrote, LeBron knows its and embraces it by putting on shows during pre game warm ups and horsing around.  LeBron is the rare superstar who’s comfortable in his own skin and willing to embrace all that comes with the hype and all the pomp and circumstance.  In that way, LeBron is normal because he hasn’t allowed himself to get caught up in everything around him and looks like a kid when he plays.  But his major flaw other than his language skills is the fact that LeBron needs to be the leader of the group.  He HAS to be.  Every group has that guy who needs to plan the trips and makes the phone calls to find out what everyone is doing or names the email chain you’re in and LeBron is that guy.  He would automatically be the leader of your group whether you wanted him or not.  He knows no other way.  He’s the alpha dog which I will get to more on the LeBron sweepstakes handicap article I will eventually do.  Those guys end up leaving the group and being replaced or he learns to be able to blend in better and not insist on being that guy.  No two ways about it.

Nash and Howard on the other hand are so similiar, they just look like goofy kids.  What sealed it for me for Nash was him accepting the Skills Challenge trophy and doing the goofy “strain to lift the trophy” thing but this article (http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/postedsports/archive/2010/02/11/steve-nash-is-the-most-internetiest-basketball-player-in-the-world.aspx) should further prove to you why any guy that takes himself that seriously could fit into any group.  Also Howard is always smiling and always putting on a show and never afraid to be silly.  When David Aldridge asked him about the Shaq controversy (who’s approaching bitter old man status real soon), you could see the pained expression as if telling David through his facial reaction that he did NOT want to talk about this and didn’t feel comfortable being serious.  That right there did it for me.

Otherwise, no other player seems that interesting to me and I despise listening to them talk.

8.  Steve Nash had the best weekend in all of sports. He went to Vancouver to carry the Olympic flame in his native Canada.  Flew to Dallas the next day and won the Skills Contest and then Sunday got almost as loud a reception as his good friend Dirk Nowitzki.  Its easy to see why so many NBA ball players love him and love playing with him but very few can say that they had that kind of weekend.

9. Dallas Stadium raised the bar for all sports All Star games. No doubt the NBA was smart to capitalize on the new Dallas stadium before even the NFL had a chance to (think Super Bowl 2011), but the NBA’s brain trust couldn’t have foreseen how successful the game was going to be.  Granted the competitive level got to normal with about 7 minutes left, but guys were genuinely trying to do the best dunks just so they could run back look up to the rafters at that beautiful screen and see them on the humungo jumbotron.  Granted pride is no longer part of the conversation for All Star games, but certainly guys angling for plays of the game and MVP’s were most certainly trying their hardest.  But how does the NBA address that next year when it comes to Staples?  The flash and the intrigue of having an NBA game at Dallas stadium has come and gone.  How does the NBA make it matter for NBA players next year when they are in a regular arena?  The fact that its in Hollywood will only affect the extra curricular downtown LA area and also Vegas (its only 3 hours away).

10. Everyone wants to be LeBron’s teammate. Just look at the East Squad’s entrance and the West squad’s entrance.  Its clear that LeBron’s repoire with his fellow players is so high and it makes him so likeable to everyone involved that its hard to hate the guy.  He commands attention and respect even from veterans.  We know how great a teammate KG is, even at the All Star Game he was acting like it was  regular season game, at the edge of his seat and cheering on his teammates, but even he takes a backseat to LeBron.  LeBron gets all his teammates involved and the genius of him to do the group intros is further proof of the extras that LeBron just naturally brings.  I see why Cleveland fans think that he’s developed this repoire with his teammates in Cleveland, but if the All Star game proved anything, he can build that up with just about anybody.  Just give him a few minutes, he can teach David Lee how to shimmy.