NBA All-Star Weekend: Blake Griffin's Car Dunk and Carmelo Anthony's Trade Woes

Going into the NBA All-Star Weekend's Slam Dunk Contest and Three-Point Shootout, Blake Griffin and Ray Allen were undeniably the favorites to win and take the hardware home, but only one managed to do so.

Dunks over cars and an unlikely candidate for the Three-Point Contest were the stories for last night's All-Star events, and, of course, basketball would not be as legitimate these days without the harassment of Carmelo Anthony and his possible trade.

Allen and Paul Pierce were going to be in the second round of the Three-Point Shootout, no one doubted that, but who was going to be shooting beside them was an entirely different question.

Daniel Gibson, James Jones and Dorell Wright were competing and had an equal opportunity to make a run at the trophy. Unfortunately, with the weight of a million losses on his back, Gibson could not advance and Wright could not drop an uncontested shot to save his own life.

Allen showed the world why he is the all-time three-point shooter with exact form every time he lifted off the ground and released the ball, but could not push past Miami's perimeter genius Jones, while Dwyane Wade and Kevin Garnett exchanged a little friendly banter on the sidelines.

Maybe this can give the South Beach team a spark of confidence going into their final regular season battle against the Boston Celtics in April.

The dunk contest, however, was a lot more entertaining than most people assumed it would be. With Griffin's impressive and frighteningly wide resume of dunks to choose from, there were no limits to what he would be able to do with practice and a coach like two-time championship winner Kenny Smith.

But, no one expected Serge Ibaka, Demar DeRozan and 7'0" Javale McGee to be just as well-versed and even more creative than the human highlight.

McGee may have been the most impressive with his two-rim, two-ball dunk and then his three-balls-in-one-hoop dunk. There was general consensus that that no one had ever seen anything like those and he went into the final round with a slight lead over Griffin.

That was until Team Griffin brought out the biggest prop ever: a car. With a feed from Baron Davis, Griffin cleared 71.1 inches of steel with a choir singing "I Believe I Can Fly" in his background. Talk about creative.

Though he did not make it into the last rounds of the contest, Ibaka's free-throw line dunk challenged history by having an entire foot behind the line as he lifted off. 

What would it all be without a little talk about Anthony, the coach for the sophomores in the Rookie Challenge? Lebron James came to the defense of his 2003 draft classmate by saying that Anthony knew less than the media did at that moment. With noticeably less sleep and irritation setting in, there is wonder in the fact that he even talks to cameras at all.