An excerpt:
Watching Utah's Deron Williams dribbling around the motionless NBA props in one of those ceaseless All-Star gimmick stunts, it was eerily like he was again dribbling around the Nuggets defense.
Otherwise, nothing that happened at the NBA All-Star extended weekend in New Orleans, including the game itself, had much to do with basketball.
It had to do with preening and posing and showing off, and not showing off for the fans or for the event, which would be somewhat forgivable, but for the most dreary of male motives, for each other.
The affair encourages this kind of peacock flash and flaunt, or to use the official judging criteria, "artistic ability, imagination, body flow and fan response," reducing basketball to figure skating, or at least to one of Allen Iverson's drives to the basket.
The next time, for example, anyone blows out a candle on a cupcake while dunking the basketball, as Minnesota's Gerald Green did, it had better be somebody's birthday and it better be James Naismith's.
And I suppose if Orlando's Dwight Howard, who won the slam dunk thing, can dress up as Superman, he ought to at least have to outrun a speeding locomotive, or jump over the tall building in a single bound, rather than just a small space inside of it.
First of all, the Slam Dunk competition was the first exciting Slam Dunk competition in recent memory, it was an amazing spectacle that will live on dazzling YouTube viewers for ages to come. Second of all, the game itself after some goofing at the start (as is usual for this contest), turned into a real game where the players cared who won.
I think Bernie is just getting his bitterness regarding the NBA out of the way early in anticipation of a disappointing 1st round exit by the Nuggets in the certain to be ultra-competitive Western Conference playoffs. Cheer up Bernie, maybe the Nuggets will miss the playoffs entirely and get lucky in the lottery.
When you look at the Nuggets roster, you figure them for being a top 5 team in the league, but their performance on a nightly basis hasn't matched that talent. There's something wrong with that team, don't know if it's Melo's mellowness, Iverson's moodiness, or Karl's can't-coachiness, but they look like the best candidate for really good team that manages to slip out of the top eight in the Western Conference during the month of March.
Of course, the NBA should just let the 16 teams with the best record in the playoffs (leave off the specifics for a different post), regardless of conference, that way you won't have a 50 win team miss the playoffs in the West, while a team 10 games below .500 make the playoffs in the East (both could happen this year).
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