One Year Closer to Vegas

by SonDog

Now it's my turn to apologize for the sporadic posts as of late. For the greater part of the last five days, I've been either in my bed or on my couch, suffering from a cold/flu that can only be blamed on Hurricane Katrina. (See the Story coming this week titled, "It Had to Be Beijing," for more information. And thanks a lot, Kev.) During this time I've been on a ridiculous over-the-counter cocktail of NyQuil, TheraFlu, Zicam, vitamin C, Jameson, bananas, Japanisches heilpflanzen-Ol (German for Japanese peppermint oil), other random European herbal supplements that include Echinacea in one form or another, multi-vitamins and a nuclear cough syrup that makes you see lizards. Other than the fact that at one point I thought my name was Sven and that I was a Swedish ice dancer, everything has been great.

That being said, I cleared my head long enough on Saturday evening for one of my favorite nights of the NBA season -- All-Star Saturday Night. LeseDog, who has morphed into an NBA fan over the duration of our relationship, decided to join me for the festivities... in our living room... complete with Pizza Hut, Jameson, TiVo and my annual running journal for an hour-by-hour recap of the night's events (when I say "annual," usually that means just sending my thoughts to OZ over email the following day). The NBA does the best job out of the four major sports in celebrating it's All-Star competition, including the festivities on Saturday night. Here's my hazy journal from the evening:

5:00 - 6:00 PM -- TNT airs a special show titled, "All-Time Best Dunk," as a way to breathe life into what has become a dying slam-dunk competition. During the first 30 minutes, TNT showed dunks that I had not thought about in some time, as well as dunkers that I had not thought about in some time. Baby Jordan (a.k.a. Harold Minor), Isiah Rider and his East Bay Funk Dunk, Bones Barry winning the contest in 1996 with his free-throw line jam (to which, immediately following the competition, Reggie Miller deadpanned, "A white guy just won the dunk contest."), The Human Highlight Reel competing in the competition as late as 1990 (It's a travesty that Dominique Wilkins isn't in the Hall of Fame. Absolute travesty.), The Baby Mamba competing and winning as an 18-year-old rookie in 1997, the 2000 competition that included Steve Francis, T-Mac and Vinsanity (I remember watching this one and thinking, "Why did Golden State trade him for Antwan Jamison?"), J-Rich from 2002-2004, and many more.

The last 30 minutes were pretty much a waste of time. The highlight came when LeseDog, for the 16th time, said quizzically about Charles Barkley, "I can't believe how fat he is now! I knew he was fat, but when did he get this fat?" During this time, Ernie Johnson tells us to text in a number to vote for the best dunk of all-time (between Jordan's leaner and Vinsanity's original between the legs.). In case you didn't hear it the first time, Johnson will repeat this for the next ten minutes, and intermittently through the next three-plus hours.

One of the finalists for All-Time Dunk...

6:00 -- 7:00 -- We have our first Cheryl Miller sighting of the night! Does Cheryl realize she's not a man? I've always wondered about this. I seriously think she believes she's Reggie's brother, not sister.

At about 6:05, I puked. Why? Because TNT decided to air a 10-minute piece of how The Mamba helped out in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. That's great and all, but it was what Ernie Johnson said that made me puke.

First, some background. On September 11, 2005, the NBA and its players organized a Hurricane Katrina relief game in Houston. Stars from throughout the NBA participated in the game, donated money and time, all to benefit those displaced by the tragic events. (One of my favorite sub-plots of the sports-relief angle: The NFL spent about as much money on their PR effort to talk about how much money they were donating as the amount they actually donated. The NBA's event flew somewhat under the radar, with most people not even realizing the game actually aired on TNT. Fascinating.)

So, back to where the Mamba comes in to this. Ernie Johnson looks straight into the camera and says, and I quote, "Everybody who was here was affected, but arguably none more so, than Kobe Bryant."

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

This man was affected more from Hurricane Katrina than any other man in the NBA. And he really didn't tell police that Shaq gets away with it by paying the women off.

The piece is so disgustingly calculated that most of the TNT guys don't know what to say once it's over. Here are some verbatim examples:

Kenny Smith -- "A lot of times... you're affected by people, other than monetarily." At this point, LeseDog turns to me and says, "What?"
Reggie Miller -- "Kind of lets me show... how small... what we do." I'm keeping this on my TiVo just to watch this over and over. Honestly, that's what he said, verbatim.
Charles Barkley, seemingly rolling his eyes in disgust -- "Kobe's not the only one." I think Chuck is the only guy in the NBA realm who isn't ready to put aside all the crap that The Mamba has done (like, say, driving three future HOFers out of LA) just because he's having a terrific season. There are times when I can't stand Charles Barkley, but this is not one of them.

At 6:20 we have a Commissioner Stern sighting! And he's starting out his interview by talking about the 2007 All-Star game being in Las Vegas! Here's an excerpt of the conversation LeseDog and I just had:

SonDog: "We should get those airline and game tickets right now!"
LeseDog: "Yeah right. I don't think that will be a good place to take baby."
SonDog: "I should get those airline and game tickets right now!"
LeseDog: "NO!! I don't think so, dude."
SonDog: "Damnit."

There are so many aspects of the All-Star game being in Vegas that I can't get over, including these certainties. 1) Usually NBA officials have trouble handling all of the media-pass requests for All-Star weekend. In Vegas, they are going to have trouble handling all of the groupie-pass requests. Seriously, the groupies might as well unionize and hold a first-of-its-kind convention at the MGM Grand during this weekend as they're all going to be in town. 2) There's a good chance that The Mamba could be the father of 28 children by the time this weekend is over. 3) How much has the NBA learned from Magic Johnson? If the answer is, "Not much," then there is going to be an STD epidemic of record-shattering proportions next February in Las Vegas. 4) Over 3,000 women are going to believe that they slept with Steve Blake of the Portland Trailblazers. Blake is about the only 5'10" white guy in the NBA, you figure out the rest. 5) This will be a test-run for Vegas. If it's as much of a success as it promises to be, they will get an NBA team almost immediately.

At 6:35 we finally get to the player introductions for the night's events... and here's Tony Parker... which means, we have our first Eva Longoria sighting of the night! I think I saw Parker mouth the words, "I'm dating Eva Longoria," during the introductions. Coincidentally, when Kobe was introduced, he mouthed the words, "I'm the Mamba, able to strike with 99% accuracy and precision." (Also, Steve Nash was just introduced, with LeseDog saying, "He has about as much presence as a fucking snail.")

For the next 25 minutes or so, we see Eva Longoria five more times, we see a couple of WNBA players missing short jump-shots, and once again hear about how deeply The Mamba was affected by a bond he made with one of the displaced Hurricane Katrina children. Touching story, and a lone tear once again comes to thine eye.

7:00 -- 8:00 PM -- The event that I've really been looking forward to is the Playstation Skills Competition. The lineup of Chris Paul, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Steve Nash is unparalleled for the Saturday night events in recent years.

D-Wade ends up winning the event, but I had a couple of random thoughts while watching these four studs compete: 1) I was dead-wrong about Chris Paul coming into the season. I really didn't think he would be the type of player (should have been an All-Star) that he has become. I saw him more of a Steve Francis/Stephon Marbury type of shoot-first point guard when he was at Wake Forest, but in half a season he has proven to the world why I will never be an NBA General Manager. 2) If Steve Nash were a baseball player, we would be hearing all sorts of steroids rumblings. Every time you think Nash is at the absolute pinnacle of his career, he gets a little better. If the season ended today, he would once again be the league's MVP. So, a 32-year-old point guard, seemingly near the end of his career, morphs into the game's best floor-leader, and nobody even bats an eye-lash at this? I'm telling you, if this were baseball, we would already be having Congressional hearings. I may have to write an entire post on this during the second-half of the season. 3) LeBron James had what promises to be the best dunk of the night at the end of his first-round run. It's a shame that he doesn't want to be in the dunk contest. Could you imagine a dunk contest with LeBron, The Mamba, Vince Carter, D-Wade and J-Rich? Now that would bring excitement back to the event.

All the presence of a snail...

At 7:25, Ernie Johnson tells us to text in our vote for the best dunk ever for the 473rd time.

From 7:30 to 8, we watch the Three-Point contest, in which we have two pure shooters in the event: Ray Allen and Dirk Nowitzki. Dirk ended up winning, despite the fact that his last "money ball" left his hand after the buzzer sounded, leading Charles Barkley to mutter the line of the night, "Maybe they got them Super Bowl referees out there." Which begs the question, how far has the integrity of the NFL fallen. I mean, the NFL referees have become worse than the NBA referees, which is saying a lot. Anytime you have NBA people laughing about the officiating of the NFL... well, let's just say that there are some issues that the NFL needs to clear up in the off-season. I'm sure that if I lived in Seattle right now, I would feel much stronger about this.

On a side note: Dirk is the best player to win the Three-Point contest since Larry Bird. So far tonight, we've had two of the top-10 players in the league win in D-Wade and Dirk Diggler. I love this game!

Of course, then we have the dunk contest.

8:00 - 9:00 -- The main problem I have with the dunk contest is the lack of stars. I mean, Andre Iguodala, Josh Smith, Hakim Warrick and Nate Robinson are nice, but we need the stars back in order to truly showcase this event. Look, these guys may be good young players, but they are nowhere near household names. Even Magic referred to Hakim Warrick as "Peter" Warrick not once, but twice (Peter Warrick, of course, is a WR for the Seattle Seahawks). Most people outside of Philly have never even heard of the "other" A.I., and Josh Smith is known for one-thing so far in his career, and that's winning last year's dunk contest.

5'7" (there's no way he's 5'9") Robinson ended up winning the competition, despite the fact that it took him 14 attempts to complete his final dunk. That being said, the dunk of the night had to be his jumping over Spud Webb in the final round. Remember, Webb once won this event simply for being able to dunk. Robinson now has upped the ante for little people everywhere by jumping OVER said Webb.

There's no Photoshopping here... Robinson should join the circus.

By 9, both LeseDog and I had seen just about enough for one night. I was ready to once again put myself into a medicated coma for the night and she was ready for bed as well. Tonight we have the actual All-Star game itself.