Let me say this: Ray Allen got robbed tonight. He should have been the MVP of this game. I credit King James and his near triple-double….but the East doesn’t win that game if Ray Allen doesn’t channel Jesus Shuttlesworth in the 4th quarter. Good lord. Three straight threes in the last 3 minutes. Unreal performance by Ray, I think KG pulled his other ab getting hyped.
I doubt Ray-Ray gets looked over again.
You know what though…LeBron’s finish was crazy. If you missed the game…late in the game, LeBron brings the ball up. No sprint, not really open floor fast break. Just bringing it up. He crosses up Amare, comesdown the lane and boomed through/over three people. Poor Dirk got it the worst. He half jumped, took the brunt of the dunk and got socked in the face. Hasslehoff be damned. In the replays and pictures, Dirk just looks bad.
The man LeBron is crazy. And his dance moves are nuts.
Other thoughts:
–Apology to B-Roy. I thought he would poop his pants, but he did the opposite (thanks A-Steeze!). Who saw him playing the most minutes of anyone on the West? Exactly. 18 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists is quite the debut. Not to mention that he was the only Western Conference All-Star to not turn the ball over (Kobe doesn’t count he played 10 seconds).You did us proud iRoy. To take that a step furthur, the entire “next generation” represented themselves extremely well. Chris Paul with 16 points and 14 assists, Amare with 18 and a dunk on Dwight and Boozer with 14 and 10. Well done, young fellas.
–Kudos to you Rasheed Wallace. You were the only East reserve to have any sort of life in you during intros. I mean geeze, Chauncey, Rip, Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce and Antawn Jamison…no smiles? Especially you Joe? You should have been cheesing all over the place since you got picked over Ray-Ray. So thank you for dancing in the intros. And also thank you for jacking up left handed threes until you made one. A joy as always.
–Speaking of intros, big time Boo to you TNT for your shoddy camerawork. How do you miss the East’s “team” dance (although Kidd did mess it up with his ‘omg wait am is he intro’ing me oh crap are we gonna do it’ face) AND miss the West’s B-Boy pose. I mean honestly…seeing what happens in intro is one of my favorite things about the All-Star game. And you took it from me.
(I guess I got spoiled from ’06. East and West were clean.)
–Dwight Howard has officially arrived ladies and gentlemen. Tonight confirmed that he is a full-fledged superstar. If he didn’t take the torch from Shaq in their dance-off last year, he surely did literally taking Superman away from him. I wonder if Shaq is really mad about that? I mean the guy has Superman tatted on his arm..it’s always been his thing. Now people are openly calling Dwight, Superman.
–The uniforms….yikes. Why the two colors? To me the whole thing just got confusing. I know the East was Blue and Silver but that silver on the back looked similar to the West’s white front. Not to mention they were just plain ugly.
–Byron Scott and Doc Rivers are entirely too nice. If I was coaching the All-Star squads I would have done it completely different. In Byron’s case, I tell Kobe and everyone around him we’re only going to play him the first couple minutes. But at that first dead ball, I guarantee you would see me on the sideline joking with someone and pretending I missed it. Or pointing at T.O. Or something. I might even fake tie my shoe. I’d keep him in and see what happens. In Doc’s case I would have played the three Pistons, LeBron and Dwight the whole game. Of course I’m kidding, they did as good of a job as possible. That’s a fine line to have to walk between giving players enough playing time so they don’t feel slighted and want to demolish you the entire 2nd half of the season and not over playing them and getting cussed out the next morning by Coach X.
–Gotta love the Jason Kidd/Dirk interaction at the free throw line near the end of the game. I’m beginning to not care about this Dallas/New Jersey trade. I’m just tired of hearing about it, do it already. It’s kind of like watching a television show and they tease two people getting together. Eventually after the teases and hype you just tell them to get on with it. Dallas and New Jersey…this is me telling you to get on with it.
(If Keith Van Horn ends up holding this ‘new’ trade up again I will just die laughing.)
–I’ve seen D-Wade’s G2 commercial entirely too many times in the past 3 days. By the way, G2 basically tastes like Kool-Aid that needs a little more sugar. Not bitter but definitely not sweet enough. I have the Grape flavor in my hands as we speak. Any grape soda jokes and I will give you a one-two punch Money Mayweather style. It’s freakin’ Black History Month people.
–Speaking of Money Mayweather…we should have seen him and Vince McMahon doing business sooner or later. YouTube what this guy did tonight. You couldn’t pay me enough to take a punch from that guy…he made the friggin Big Show bleed!!
–I love how the East came out and got dunks and layups for their first 6 shots while the West was bricking open jumpers. They were out-running the West. No surprise when Nash and Paul came in that all changed.
–Yao Ming continues to suck it up in the ASG. By the way, the game was actually pretty dang good this year but it definitely missed Shaq. There was no funny guy out there to give some comedy during the 2nd and 3rd quarters when things tend to get a little on the long and sloppy side. I needed to see the big guy dance or try to cross someone up. Oh well.
All in all a great All-Star Weekend. Tremendous showcase for the League and good publicity. No “Black Super Bowl”. No chaos in Vegas. An entertaining weekend where the game spoke for itself and the NBA was able to promote the game, the future and how much they care. Also a good showing by N’awlins.
(By the way…I did call the East winning and that LeBron would win the MVP. Even though he shouldn’t have. Just saying.)