Worst. All-Star Weekend. Ever.

So you want the highlight of the NBA All-Star game? Here it is:



Why was that the highlight? Because the game sucked. A lot. It was a boring blowout, Kobe was ball-hogging like it was his job and LeBron sucked. I mean, he must have dribbled the ball off his foot at least five times. Pathetic.

Ok, that wasn't the only highlight. This was pretty sweet:



And this was the play of the play of the night:



Basically, if it wasn't for Shaq, who dominated like the Shaq of old, that All-Star Game would have been the biggest piece of garbage ever. And that was pretty much my feelings on the entire weekend. The three-point contest was horrible. It was without question the worst collection of shooting ever in the event. I mean, Rashard Lewis made the finals and managed to hit 7 shots in the extra period. Seven. That's pathetic. No one reached 20 points in any round. No one. Horrible.

Admittedly, I didn't see the H.O.R.S.E. G.E.I.C.O. competition, which I heard was pedestrian, and I didn't watch the rookie game, which apparently was owned by Kevin Durant. I'm sorry I missed that, seeing as it had to be the highlight of the weekend, especially with Beasley performing well too.



As far as the dunk contest is concerned, my feelings can be summed up by Shoals and Ziller. I completely agree with this statement by Shoals:

Maybe I'm sick of Nate Robinson getting scored on a curve because he's short

I know I'm sick of Nate getting inflated scores simply because he's short. Yes, it's impressive he can get that high, but he was getting scores that were entirely too high. His first dunk, he scored higher than J.R. Smith, and they did essentially the same dunk, only J.R. caught it on the second bounce, not the first, which is much, much harder. Yet Nate got a higher score.

And as Ziller pointed out, Rudy Fernandez got jobbed:

By my count, Rudy was in fact the first European or white non-American in the dunk contest ... and he got a bit jobbed. Sure, Pau Gasol's repeated failure to land the pass properly hurt. But Nate Robinson took 137 attempts in victory a few years ago; the two-minute plus two attempts limit seems a fair standard time control in our post-Birdmanpocolyptic world. KryptoNate, the eventual King, shouldn't have beat Rudy in the first round.

He's completely right. In fact, I think Rudy's dunk from Pau was the best dunk of the night:



Yes, Dwight's off the side of the backboard was sick, as was Nate jumped over Superman, but Rudy's was easily the most difficult dunk of the night, and he did nail it in the allotted time. Either way, pathetic display by the judges and the NBA with this mockery. Last year, the dunk contest was revived, but with Saturday's awful judging and the screw-job of Iguodala a few years ago, the dunk contest leaves a bad taste … yet I'll continue to watch.

Either way, you know it was a dull game/weekend when Allen Iverson's haircut was possibly the most memorable thing.



Oh, and Duke lost again. UNC didn't, thanks to a Herculean effort by Ty Lawson, who was sick down the stretch, nailing some big threes.

Duke sucks.