Recap: All Star Saturday (or, Speaking of Flat…)

Recap: All Star Saturday (or, Speaking of Flat…)

2017-02-19 Off By EvilGenius

Well… that was deflating. After all of the fresh air that had been pumped into All Star Saturday Night last year, there was a sense of anticipation and excitement heading into the festivities for 2017 in New Orleans. What followed, however, was a slow and steady release of any sort of built up pressure as one lackluster event leaked into the next… sucking most of the air out of the Smoothie King Center… and probably most of the interest out of viewers following the broadcast. None of the three featured competitions really lived up to expectation, and social media was particularly unkind to what had been a scintillating crown jewel just a year ago… the Slam Dunk Contest. But, it was just that kind of night… when the favorites fizzled, hype turned out to be hogwash, and it was revealed that even though the world isn’t flat… All Star Saturday sure turned out to be.

The Taco Bell Skills Challenge

I’ll be honest… I’m not sure why this event exists. I understand the logic behind pitting some of the best all-around ball-handlers, passers, speedy dribblers and three point shooters against one another, but in recent years the “skills” required to win the event have become mostly irrelevant. It essentially comes down to who can make it to the three point line and sink a trey the fastest. The NBA has tried to shake things up the last couple of years by pitting back court players against big men, and for a second consecutive year a big man emerged victorious. Congrats Kristaps Porzingis.

While most guys in the field of eight sort of lollygagged their way through the rounds, The Unicorn looked determined to do the New York Knicks and three-point shooting, ball-handling big men everywhere, proud with his efforts. And, as unnecessary as this competition might seem, his final showdown with Gordon Hayward was one of the few rousing moments of the entire evening.

At least the Knicks will have something to celebrate this season…

https://twitter.com/SInow/status/833128210003087360

The JBL Three Point Contest

When Kemba Walker, the first participant up, came out of the gate firing with a score of 19, it seemed like we were in for a high scoring night of long bombs. Kyrie, who won the event in 2013, followed and just edged out Kemba with a score of 20 (as Phil Hubbard quipped on the LT “Kyrie starts out flat but rounds into form…”). After a miserable showing from Reggie Miller’s darkhorse candidate to win, Wes Matthews (11 points), Rockets’ sharpshooter Eric Gordon took the lead with a 24 point round. With four guys remaining, including defending champion, Klay Thompson, things weren’t looking too good for either Kemba or Uncle Drew to make the top three and advance to the next round. But, Swaggy P (Nick Young) fell just short with 18 points, and then both (Canton’s own) C.J. McCollum and Kyle Lowry seemed to forget how to shoot… registering 10 and nine points respectively (yikes!). Finally, it was time for Klay to defend his title. He came up just a little short…

Apparently, it was better to go early in the first round, as three of the first four guys advanced. In the final round, Kemba couldn’t quite match his first round total, finishing with 17 points. Kyrie was up next, and once again started slow before drilling seven of his final nine balls to pull ahead of Kemba with 20 points.

It was Eric Gordon’s contest to lose at that point… and he almost did. After racking up 19 points with his entire last rack still to go, he bricked all but the second to last ball to send matters to an overtime shootout with Kyrie. With no real break before the overtime, Kyrie appeared to lose his legs a bit, and could only muster 18 points. Gordon didn’t make the same mistake twice on his final rack, and knocked down 21 points to seal the victory.

I had picked Kyrie to win, not just because I’m a homer, but also because I figured he’d be gunning for Klay. Since Thompson failed to get out of the first round, it’s possible that took some fuel off of Kyrie’s fire. Maybe he should have had either Klay or Steph stand in front of him while he shot his three balls, since those ones usually go in. In hindsight, I probably should have just gone with Eric Gordon anyway… since he’s got awesome initials…

The Sager Strong Foundation Charity Three Point Fundraiser

Immediately following the Three Point Contest, a touching video tribute to the late Craig Sager ran on the jumbotron, after which TNT’s Ernie Johnson invited the three finalists back onto the floor to shoot some additional three pointers for charity. Then, Reggie Miller got into the act, inviting a slew of other participants (both NBA players and celebrities alike) to join in…

The participants (about a dozen in all) took turns seeing how many threes they could hit in a minute, raising $10k for every made bucket. They wound up making 13 for a total of $130k… but TNT wasn’t going to stop there. Thus began the most awkward segment of the night. Ernie and Reggie summoned Steph Curry from the sidelines and put it on his shoulders to hit a half court shot to raise the money donated up to $500k. Steph, with the confidence of a two time MVP who famously hits shots like this in every practice, claimed he could do it in three tries… They wound up giving him nine. He missed them all.

This was probably as close as I’ve ever come to feeling bad for Steph Curry. I mean, he may very well have been caught off guard by the whole thing (it didn’t seem particularly well thought out by the TNT folks ahead of time), and it couldn’t have been easy trying to make a 50 footer while wearing jeans and boots instead of his usual Under Armor gear. Still, he had enough bravado to say he needed just three attempts, and he probably should have stuck to that. The final six just increased the awkward pressure, especially since it was to raise money for a good cause.

Fortunately, Shaq came to the rescue with Craig Sager’s son Ryan…

The Verizon Slam Dunk Contest

As underwhelming as the earlier events turned out to be, they were always going to be the undercard appetizer for the eagerly anticipated main event of the Slam Dunk Contest. Even though Zach Lavine was missing (due to a torn ACL), and unable to renew his rivalry with Aaron Gordon, the hope was that we’d be treated to a whole new edition of scintillating throw downs from the skywalking Magic forward.

Veteran dunker, DeAndre Jordan, kicked things off with a jam over an actual DJ (DJ Khaled… who captured the dunk on SnapChat as it was happening).

Not a bad showing for the big man… but he wouldn’t get nearly the height of his fellow competitors, including Glenn Robinson III who scored the first 50 of the night with this dunk over a piggyback…

GR3 got so high, he actually appeared to hit his head on the rim. Not to be outdone in terms of jumping over multitudes of people… Derrick Jones Jr. (who supposedly plays for the Phoenix Suns), decided to jump over what Nate referred to as a human centipede…

https://twitter.com/DunkContest_/status/833148397263560705

So, three pretty good dunks to start things out… but the crowd at the Smoothie King Center were ready to be wowed by the dude who came next, Aaron Gordon. And, it seemed like he wasn’t going to disappoint when he unveiled his new assistant… a remote controlled drone that would carry and drop a basketball in perfect position for him to dunk it. However, as Mike P pointed out in the thread when he reiterated Terry Francona’s sage words during the Trevor Bauer incident last fall… “Everyone has had an accident with a drone at some point in their life.” In other words, it did not go as planned for last year’s runner up…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icBOZQ-lPBM

Sadly, that was about as good as it got for Gordon… as he failed to complete his second dunk (which was fairly pedestrian given his standards anyway) and did not advance beyond the first round. DeAndre also missed out, even though he made his second dunk on the first try, since it was a fairly shaky attempt. That left GR3 and DJ2 to square off in the final round after Robinson’s somewhat flawed tribute to Dee Brown’s eye covering dunk in 1991, and Jones’ near-flawless off the side of the backboard dunk…

The final round, however, was riddled with misses and missed opportunities… and ultimately fairly devoid of much imagination. Both dunkers resorted to jumping over increasing numbers of human obstacles with varying degrees of success.

GR3 did this…

…while DJ2 failed to do this…

Then, even though DJ2 pulled this off for a sympathetic 50 (the judges tried unsuccessfully to keep the suspense going)…

…GR3 made it academic with this final offering…

https://twitter.com/SInow/status/833155852290908160

Though Robinson completed the dunk well, it was basically just a slightly different version of the first dunk he did on the night… just with an additional person. All in all, it was a pretty uninspired and uninspiring dunk contest… especially in light of the epic showdown for the ages that Gordon and Lavine put on last year in Toronto. It was a disappointing follow up for Gordon, and it completed the evening that generally fell flat.

The one hope I have for next season’s version of the dunk contest was supplied by a Tweet from a familiar source…

Now that could get interesting…

Let’s hope the ASG tomorrow picks up the slack.

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CategoryFeatured Recaps
TagsAll Star Weekend Eric Gordon Glen Robinson III Klay Thompson Kristaps Porzingis Kyrie Irving Steph Curry
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NickNevers

Skills competition needs a total revamp. Anyone with any basketball skill could do the challenge. Need to shake it up; have em throw bounce passes through a hoop, hit a bank shot, throw a pass/dribble past moving obstacles, do a crossover dribble to show handles in one spot. I mean c’mon; make this more creative.

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daspec90

Good point. And, yeah, with the notable exception of last years’ Dunk contest, that needs something fresh as well. After the Intel drone we are dangerously close to jumping the shark. And I mean literally: “Ladies and Gentlemen, please draw your attention to the Sea World shark tank being wheeled into the court.”

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JB225

Just read a rumor that the Cavs are looking to trade Shump for Ricky Rubio. Thoughts?

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TV63

Amico said no to those rumors. Who knows?

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TV63

Yeah it was rather a dud for all points you layed out. I just didn’t see the challenge at all in Skills Contest. Watching Kyrie was a highlight. I thought he had it until next to the last set. He kinda rushed himself. At least it went to a tie breaker round. The you seen all the “flat jokes” by Warrior fans mostly after he lost for. That only lasted like a minute or two. It stopped abruptly after Curry had a horrible performance in honoring the late “Craig Sager”. I do blame TNT and company. All you heard throughout… Read more »

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TV63

I apologize for some of the grammar mistakes. Looks like I too fell a little flat.

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Mike Podracky

Content counts more than typos. I make then too

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daspec90

The saving grace for me was having it recorded so that I could get through it quickly.

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TV63

Good idea. I’m going back and deleting it . I would rather watch a previously recorded Cavs game that had more skill & entertainment.

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Raoul

Major ESPN article on LeBron’s empire: http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/18686205/the-second-chapter-lebron-james-career

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MikeO

Thanks for watching this, EG, so I didn’t have to. I generally never do, it’s a snoozefest to me. (as is the All Star game itself) Like Melo, I like to take a well earned break this weekend.

Jimmer scored 73 in China — time to sign him up!

(just kidding)

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Cols714

Curry is such a fraud. Worst MVP in NBA history.

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Kevin

I agree. Him and Klay combine to represent everything wrong with millennials.

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Simmo

Almost felt bad for him when they couldn’t stop giving him extra shots. Almost.

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