NBA: 2011 All-Star Weekend (February 13th-19th)

NBA All-Star Weekend

         Rookie Challenge MVP – John Wall

         Skills Challenge – Steph Curry

         Dunk Champion – Blake Griffin

         3pt Contest Winner – James Jones

         All-Star Game MVP – Kobe Bryant

So this past weekend I did not catch much of the NBA All-Star festivities and from what I heard, I didn’t miss much. I did get to catch the Rookie Challenge where John Wall was MVP with a record-setting 22 assists including one to the only other MVP candidate and Slam dunk Champion Blake Griffin; an alley-oop pass he bounced off the floor! Crazy, check the video above! The Skills Challenge is always a cool event which displays skills from some of the best guards in the league, Steph Curry won that event. As I (and 98% of the world) predicted super-human Blake Griffin would win the Slam Dunk Contest. He had a couple of ridiculous dunks but its so sad to see how commercialism is killing the game of basketball as Griffin won the contest on a dunk which he could do at any point. The creativity level on the dunk was a zero but because he jumped over the “shiny KIA product placement” car the hype behind Blake made it seem like it was a great dunk. Lets be clear, it wasn’t! In my Pre-All Star game blog article I predicted that the game this year could be one of the best of all-time. I was right! With Kobe and KD as the closest things we have seen to Michael Jordan type scoring, the West was simply unstoppable. Both of these players can really shoot and score in anyway they please, anytime they please. In a game where there isn’t much defense being played anyway it caused the east to have to close out on shooters for the west. Kobe Bryant took home the MVP with 37 points, 14 rebounds while Kevin Durant assisted his MVP teammate with 34 points. On the East team, its leader Lebron James showed and proved as he had only the second ever triple-double in an NBA All-Star game with 29 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists. Amare Stoudemire also added 29 points. In a way I was right, individually Kobe, Lebron and KD had legendary nights but as a whole teams were just averaged. Back in the Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and MJ era the All-Star game was a time to have fun but also time to show that your conference is the best in the league and that you are the best player in the league. The best players in the league showed why they are the best in the 2011 All-Star game!