NBA All Star Weekend Recap

The NBA All Star Weekend is behind us and now it's time to reflect on the good and bad of the events that took place in New Orleans.

Celebrity All Star Game:

The weekend started off with the Celebrity All Star game that was actually a better game than recent years past. The game featured Snoop Dogg hitting a DEEP three that showcased his Kevin Durant range. Comedian Kevin Hart won his third consecutive MVP, although he would relinquish the title to US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan who lit up the stat sheet with 20 point, 11 rebounds, 6 assists.

Rising Stars Challenge:

Xinhua Photo

That game was followed by the Rising Stars game between rookies and sophomores and led by general managers Grant Hill and Chris Webber. Each manager got to select their own teams with Webber going with Anthony Davis with the first overall pick, Hill picked Damian Lillard to lead his team.

The game was the tale of two halves, with Detroit Pistons center Andre Drummond holding it down in the first half, gaining 16 points and 10 rebounds in his first 10 minutes. He would continue his dominant performance in the second half, but the action was heating up everywhere else as well, so his performance took a backseat so to speak.

Cleveland Cavaliers guard Dion Waiters and New York Knicks guard Tim Hardaway Jr battled it out for the latter part of the second half with ankles being broke and a ridiculous battle of shot-for-shot. Hardaway finished the game with a game-high 36 points, Waiters would score a team Hill-high 31 points.

Another interesting one-on-one battle was the Plumlee brothers of Mason (Brooklyn Nets) and Miles (Phoenix Suns). One of the best highlights between the brothers was when Anthony Davis was looking to posterize Mason but instead got his attempt stuffed, Miles was able to grab the deflection and slam it down with a great heads up play.

Drummond would wind up winning the Rising Stars MVP, finishing with 30 points and 25 rebounds in a victory for Team Hill who beat Team Webber 142-136.

The trophy presentation suffered a little mishap when the sponsor/presenter dropped and broke the trophy while handing it to Drummond, check it out below.

All Star Saturday

NBA All Star Saturday had some new formats to the way some of the contests were played. There was nice additions to certain challenges such as the three point contest featuring a row of money balls placed wherever each competitor chose. There was also some odd new format changes such as the dunk contest adding a freestyle round and the most bizarre final round that had you thinking, "This can't be the end, it makes no sense." Even the broadcasters were confused on whether the contest had really just finished.

Portland Trailblazers second year guard Damian Lillard had his plate full the entire weekend, competing in 5 total events, including three on Saturday (Skills Challenge, Three Point Contest, and Slam Dunk Contest).

Shooting Stars Challenge:

(Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty Images)

The first event on Saturday was the Shooting Stars challenge which feature a player in the NBA, WNBA, and one former NBA player. That event included a close shot, a free throw shot, a three point shot and concluded after a half court shot. Chris Bosh won this event for the second straight year with teammates Swin Cash and NBA legend Dominique Wilkins.

Skills Challenge:

That was followed by the Skills Challenge, which was different than years past and featured two rounds of passing and shooting, along with obstacles throughout. The tandem of Damian Lillard and Trey Burke would win this event over Victor Oladipo and Michael Carter-Williams by a tenth of a second. This was Lillard's second consecutive year of winning this event although last year it was a singles competition.

Three Point Contest:

Next was the three point contest, which did not got the way I envisioned. I had strong hopes in Golden State Warriors guard Curry to win this competition, but instead got to watch a great final match-up between San Antonio Spurs Marco Belinelli and Washington Wizards Bradley Beal. These two met in the finals of the contest and were both able to put up 19 points to force a tiebreaker round. Belinelli was unstoppable in the final round, putting up 24 points which was the highest of the night and perfect timing to earn the three point contest championship over Beal.

Dunk Contest:

Last and certainly not least, at least in building up anticipation, was the Slam Dunk contest that would include three All Stars for the first time since 1988. Paul George, John Wall, and Damian Lillard were the All Stars and they had the pleasure (I use that word sarcastically here) to compete in the new format for the contest.

The dunk contest started with three players from each conference (East & West) perform a "freestyle round" where they could all dunk as many times as possible in a 90-second time frame. That wasn't too bad to watch because it resembled "NBA Street Vol 2" video game that was full of alley-oops you could pull off with multiple NBA athletes. I believe the best dunk of that round was easily the double alley-oop that went off the backboard, followed by a pass off the shot clock and ended with Paul George slamming it down, but you could insert any one of the players to finish off the dunk.

The next round was even more confusing with players going one-on-one with a player from the opposing conference. This was a little more easy to follow since it was one dunk per contestant but then the contest came to an unbelievable confusing end with each player only getting the one dunk and Wham! It was all over leaving the fans to vote for best dunker of the night.

The East went on to win the dunk contest, at least I think, because John Wall was crowned "Dunker of the Night" for the dunk trophy so it was either Wall or the East, I guess whatever you would prefer to consider the champion is who won.

I hope this format competes to a stop after this and the continue to use the old format of each dunker getting their own attempt and making it to the final round. If you didn't get to see the dunk contest this year do not worry because your were left without all the questions of what in the world where they thinking when the decided to go this route.

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