Sports Madness Week - 1

It's truly a mind-boggling sports week with hits and misses...highs and lows...glories and embarrassments....and a spectacular view for participants and viewers around the world!

First off... NBA All-Star Weekend ( some spectacular, the rest a sore to the eyes), next an eventfull two-week long Torino Winter Olympics, and the mid-week European Cup clashes...

NBA All-Star Weekend 2006 at Houston produced some jaw-dropping, disbelieving surprise, and moments of glory for the underdogs...All past winners were dethroned by unlikely champions...First, the Skills challenge where Steve Nash was the reigning champ...he was against LeBron James, Chris Paul, and Dwayne Wade...all of whom are more than capable all-rounders. I had my bets on Steve Nash keeping the trophy at his nice cozy home...Yet, he shocked everyone by coming in last in the preliminary....all because he couldn't made the free-throw jumpshot which has been his bread and butter. LBJ and DWade came through to the finals...with Dwayne Wade coming a little better than LBJ through his more accurate passes and shooting. - Deserving Champ.

Next come the Shooting Stars which comprises of 3-player teams, an active NBA player, a retired NBA player, and an active WNBA player. San Antonio had TP, Wecker, and Kerr, Lakers had KB8, Magic, and Leslie, Houston had TMac, Swooopes, and "Glyde" Drexler, and lastly the reigning champs Suns with Marion, Majerle, and Miller. This was somewhat a forgetable event with Spurs taking on the trophy all thanks to the sharpshooting TP. He banked the half-court shot in his first attempt. Surprisingly, all half-court shot were made by active NBA players - KB8, TP, TMac - except for the Suns, made by the WNBA player. The quote of the day - "I even banked that last shot for Kobe" as TP cheekily mentioned to Kobe.

3-Point contest was one of my favorites. This year had a strong competing participants, Q defending the title, Nowitzki, Ray Allen, Billups, Terry, Arenas. I thought it's the year for Allen, and he was pacing it early by being the leader of the 1st round. In a stroke of luck, Nowitzki's last bucket counted when replay shown that he actually still had it in his hand when the red light came on. That made the difference of making it to the final 3. So final 3 had him, Allen and Arenas. And what luck, Nowitzki found his stroke and he was in the zone, drowning threes like he does with free throws. And well, the trophy was his to keep when Allen missed most of his last balls.

To cap off the nite, it was the Dunk contest. This year was somewhat "exciting" with Josh Smith coming back and with lots of expectations. Also with him are electrifying Andre "Iggy" Iguodala, Nate "tiny" Robinson (5'9 for God's sake!!), and Hakim Warrick. I thought it was gonna be Smith vs. Iguodala...but heck, Robinson's first dunks scare the shit out of me! How in the hell can someone who's as tall as me made those ridicolous dunks?? Let alone doing it acrobatically!!
Smith was disappointing through and through and he was deservingly left out. Iggy had a SICK, SICK, SICK dunk. The dunk to be remembered next to VC's inhuman dunks! AI had thrown the ball to the backboard and with Iggy running from the bleachers, he caught the ball midair behind the backboard, glide through the air, under the board and dunked with authority. A slight mistake and it'll cost him his head and a "dunk" to remember if you know what i mean =P Nate Robinson managed to top it off with a jump-over Spud Webb (FYI the '86 Dunk Champ who's only 5'7! God must be crazy!) and he did it effortlessly!! The result was a dunk-off since the final 2 dunks got both of them the same score....the dunk-off was grimacingly boring as Nate had to throw 18 times before getting an acrobatic, high-flying dunk. Meanwhile Iggy managed to make Natey's dunk spectacular by doing something mediocre. Sigh...as such Robinson was the champ and a refreshing champ.

So recap...shortest guy won the Dunk Contest, tallest guy won the 3-point contest, the scorer -not the King- won the skillz contest, and the neighbouring team won the shooting starz by making most of the shots in quick fashion.



Then the weekend was brandished with the all-anticipated East vs. West All-Star game. The jacket was a nice design with patches of their previous "flights" (the design was taken off NASA's spacesuit with patches of their previous flights missions) which signifies the All-Star game participated. Then there's the name below the team logo and the flag of the country of birth since the players playing the All-Star game has been consistently filled with foreign players. Introductions for this year is very memorable with the starters making a dance routine. Yupe...dance routine and that means Yao doing the snake dance when passed from Steve Nash to Kobe to TD and TMac. The East did a somewhat weird dance but still quite pleasant with DWade, AI, LBJ, VC and Shaq doing the routine in unison. The game was filled with "thrillers" for the fans in the first quarter with alley-oops...dribbles and sorts before getting more serious in the late quarters. TMac was burning by running away with the clear contention for the MVP award, before LBJ decided to take it into his own hands and erased the 21 point lead built up by the West team. I hated to see the West and TMac lose the winner's trophy and MVP, but with the East and the Fantastic Four Detroit players, they won with with defense and grit. TMac had the last shot but it was blocked by none other than the King himself. What a way to shame the hosts. Anyway, great times...great moments - Shaq guarding KB8 while doing cross-overs, and ended up with Shaq manhandling Mr. KB81 himself!

So in the end, East won again, LBJ is truly the King and everyone gone home happy...

PS: Check out the dunks in www.youtube.com