NBA All-Star Saturday Lacks Passion and Enthusiasm

After watching the supposed "grand-finale" of All-Star Saturday, the Sprite Slam-Dunk, I am left to quote Mr. Five-Dollar Box, Charles Barkley:

"That was turrible," he said in his exaggerated Southern drawl.

Unbelievably bad. You would be hard-pressed to come up with something so underwhelming as Saturday night's signature event.

It felt like expecting Hayden Panettiere for a date only to discover after the doorbell rings that Judge Judy Sheindlin is smiling at your peephole.

I mean she's funny, but much better to watch from a distance, like, on television roasting litigants.

The Sprite Slam-Dunk was much better to just not watch at all. Imagine if you'd spent hundreds of bucks to watch that in person.

It just may be worth filing a class-action lawsuit against David Stern for even selling tickets to that mockery of a contest.

More interestingly, I found myself watching how disappointed the crowd was and seeing the NBA players on the sidelines faces as each dunk seemed to pile on to the boredom of the one before.

There was truly only one really good dunk, and that was DeMar DeRozan's catch off of Sonny Weems' pass from the side of the backboard into a windmill.

That was the only perfect score of the night.

Anyone who believed that this contest would be any good after hearing the field must watch basketball from an underground cave.

DeRozan used better dunks in the "dunk-off" against Eric Gordon than he had Saturday sans the backboard windmill.

Gerald Wallace is an NBA veteran who has better things to do than try and win a contest that he should've never been in.

Wallace looked old and detached from the festivities, partly because he knows he's a game-dunker and doesn't have the creativity or flair for a contest of that nature.

Shannon Brown, the high-flying Laker that Kobe Bryant and many others predicted to win it all, looked out of his league and nervous, pulling-off some generally boring dunks.

I felt really bad for him as it appeared that he wanted to win it so badly that he found a way to go out and lose it. His last dunk could be done by 95 percent of NBA players.

Kobe tossed him an oop and Brown threw it down with his left hand. That's it. No spinning, whirling, tomahawking. No creativity. Just an alley-oop.

No disrespect to Chris Paul, but he's not known as a dunker, and he could've pulled that one off.

Nate Robinson won it for the third time, but honestly after that debacle who cares? Robinson himself didn't seem to care.

He just wanted to get out of there, because after his entertaining showdowns with Dwight Howard and Gerald Green, this mess was a joke to him.

We love you Nate, but your dunking half-life has officially ended.

Stern should've seen this coming. With a rookie, a veteran who isn't a creative dunker, and an overcooked past champion he must have thought Brown could save it all.

Maybe the fact that Mr. LeBron James decided to skip the festivities after proclaiming he would do it last year killed the spirit.

I don't know if King James could've saved that rummage, but his star power would've made a difference, even if he tried really difficult dunks and missed them.

At least we would have had something to be excited about.

In regards to the other events Saturday night, the three-point shootout was by far the most entertaining.

The Celebrity game was dishearteningly comical, to the point that I felt bad for all involved and couldn't bear to watch them embarrass themselves.

HORSE lacked organization, thus making it look like a charity event for kids rather than something that was worthy of being televised.

The Haier Shooting Stars competition was decent, but nobody really clamors to see WNBA players and old-timers shoot jumpers.

I was more focused in on my biggest female-athlete crush on Becky Hammon than anything else that was happening.

Throughout the competition, I was praying she would win so I could see her for an extended amount of time accepting the trophy.

The Skills Challenge appeared as if the NBA went to the hotel rooms of Steve Nash, Deron Williams, and Russell Westbrook and made them put down the booze to come perform.

Westbrook was nabbed at the last-minute to replace the injured Derrick Rose, the defending champ, and he looked like it.

Williams looked slower than in previous years and seemed to give up, and Nash went just fast enough to beat out Williams.

Paul Pierce's victory in the three-point shootout didn't come easy as he had to fend off rookie sharp-shooter Stephen Curry, but Pierce put all of his energy and competitive fire into the contest and it showed.

Pierce, Curry, and Chauncey Billups' performances in the three-point were the only passion-filled showings all night.

Where are the days when guys like Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, and Dwyane Wade would come out and showcase their skills?

All of the great talent in the league, and the best we could get was Shannon Brown?

Maybe this year's All-Star weekend was marred by all of the collective-bargaining agreement talks that Stern is getting migraines from.

His focus clearly wasn't on the events of Saturday night, and after learning the league expects losses of 400 million, he'd better make it better fast.

If there aren't better headliners next year, Stern may find that his losses are building up.

It won't be easy to come up with something that the people will fully embrace, but after watching Saturday night unfold, someone better try.

I can't imagine sitting through such ridiculousness in which the Dallas Cowgirls were the highlight of the night.

Oh, and Becky Hammon.