NBA All-Star Weekend 2012: Saturday

Saturday during the all-star weekend consists of the shooting stars challenge, skills competition, 3-point competition and the dunk contest. To be fair, the dunk contest isn't what it once was due to there being limitations on how high one person can fly and how many amazing dunks we've already seen in the past. Despite the boring dunk contest, the other events went pretty well. The Haier shooting stars competition included players who previously and currently play for New York, Texas (now Houston,) Atlanta, and Orlando. The New York Knicks featuring Landry Fields (New York Knicks,) Cappie Pondexter (New York Liberty,) and Allan Houston who retired with the New York Knicks and is one of my favorite basketball players of all time.

The Skills competition is one of my favorite events to watch because we get to see the skill set of some of the top point guards in the league. Tony Parker, Rajon Rondo, Deron Williams, John Wall, Russell Westbrook and Kyrie Irving all participated in this competition. Watching these guards make chest passes, bounce passes and top of the key jump shots makes what these point guards do for a living easy when it surely isn't. That's why I love watching this competition. From the pool of point guards, it was hard to pick a favorite on who was going to win it as they all have a good chance of winning. In the first round, Deron Williams had the fastest time with 28.3 seconds, and Tony Parker not too far behind trailing with a time of 29.2 seconds. These two advanced along with Rajon Rondo who got a final time of 32.8 seconds. In the second round, Deron Williams struggled with the top of the key jumper, and finished with a final time of 41.4 seconds. Rajon Rondo and Tony Parker went head to head, and Rondo finished the second round at 34.6 seconds. Tony Parker barely won and finished at 32.8 seconds to win the skills competition. 

The 3 point shooters this year in the 3 point shooting competition included Kevin Love, Kevin Durant, James Jones, Mario Chalmers, Ryan Anderson, and Anthony Morrow. All of this year's shooters had a good chance to win it, and I couldn't pick a favorite. The highest score in the first round was 22 by James Jones, who had won the title the previous year. The lowest score in the first round was by Anthony Morrow with a score of 14 which isn't that bad compared to previous years. Kevin Durant finished the first round with 20, and Kevin Love finished the first round in a tie with Mario Chalmers at 18. Chalmers and Love went head to head in a tie breaker, and Kevin Love advanced to the second round beating Chalmers out by one 3. In the second round, James Jones had the low score of 12, Kevin Durant had 16 and Kevin Love had 16. The two Kevin's had to shoot it out in a tie breaker, with Kevin Love already shooting in a tie breaker round earlier. The first tie breaker was a 24 second round, and the second round tie breaker was 60 seconds. Kevin Durant finished the tie breaker with a score of 14, and Kevin Love finished with 17 which was enough to give him the three point shooting title. 


This year's dunk contest was boring. Over the years, props played a bigger role in dunk contests than creativity. This year's participants included Chase Budinger, Jeremy Evans, Paul George and Derrick Williams. To me, Chase Budinger and Derrick Williams are both in game dunkers and I didn't see them winning the competition. Paul George and Jeremy Evans both can jump out the building, and I thought it would be one of the two to win the competition. This year was a little different than previous years because this year the fans got to vote for who would win the competition as opposed to judges. The two dunks that I thought were impressive was Jeremy Evans' two ball dunk over the white Kobe Bryant, and Paul George's Larry Bird sticker dunk. Paul George also dunking over both Roy Hibbert and Dahntay Jones was a dunk to be mentioned. Jeremy Evans eventually won the dunk competition, and Paul George was robbed. The NBA should either replace the dunk contest with a layup contest, let judges determine the winner, or force Lebron James to join in order to save the event.