NBA Slam Dunk Contest: Disgusted at My Watching the Weekend's Worst

The weekend of Feb. 12-14, 2010 marked an important one for the sports world.

The Winter Olympics began on Friday with the opening ceremonies and skiing, ski jumping, and speed skating headlined the rest of the weekend.

The “Super Bowl” of auto racing, the Daytona 500, took place on Sunday, and Danica Patrick made her debut in the NASCAR Nationwide Series on Saturday.

So what was a sports enthusiast like me watching?

You guessed it—one of the worst NBA All-Star Dunk Contests I have ever seen.

Dunk contest finalists Nate Robinson and DeMar DeRozan caused many fans in attendance to drop their jaws—not in awe of what they saw, but to yawn at what they saw.

The contestants’ dunks were about as creative as binary code, and the championship round left me wanting more. Not because everything I saw was so breathtaking, but because I was still waiting for my breath to be taken away.

So yeah, I missed Apolo Anton Ohno get his sixth Olympic medal.

I missed Patrick get caught up in a massive wreck.

Heck, I didn’t even remember the Daytona 500 ran on Sunday until I got a text message telling me who won that afternoon.

You know that phrase “pruning your sports tree?” It’s when you don’t have time to follow every sport you have at least some interest in, so you cut off the branches that you don’t care about as much and just pay attention to the roots of your tree.

Well, I made the egregious mistake of leaving the pretty, colorful, flowery eye candy, but cut off the all-important root—the part that really matters.

Hopefully when March rolls around, I’ll remember that when I am deciding between watching a five-seed and 12-seed duke it out in the first round of the NCAA Tourney and CC Sabathia and John Lackey facing each other in what is probably one of about 45 matchups between the Red Sox and Yankees this season.