Dunks and Drunks

Some late thoughts about the remainder of All-Star weekend.

1. Charles Barkley

Chuck's supremacy as a basketball pundit is nothing new, but I felt compelled to share my respect for his on-air talents after this weekend.

The Round Mound of Drunken Hilarity.

Chuck is the most consistently funny sportsman around, as any Google search for his greatest hits will demonstrate. All-Star weekend, and the accompanying party atmosphere (read: abundance of beer) brings out the best in him. It really is an uninterrupted stream of genius when he's had a few. A couple of gems I noted down on Saturday:

• -- After a commercial in which athletes overcome their opponents thanks to drinking Gatorade: "Ever notice that Gatorade doesn't work on guys that suck?"
• -- After a co-commentator notes it'd be impressive if Nate Robinson dunked over some cheerleaders: "It'd be impressive if he was taller than one of them."
• -- As the dunk contest winner is about to be announced: (Hopefully) "Maybe nobody'll win!"

His quotes (however hilarious) don't fully convey his spontaneous brilliance: he's opinionated, blunt, unfocused and funny. So it's fortunate that he's an American sportsman, because were he a ex-footballer, he'd never get on a football show here in the UK. Our TV media seems to be preoccupied with maintaining a subdued, businesslike 'respectable' air on sports shows - sucking all of the fun out of something which is universally-popular precisely because it's fun.

The Christmas tree in the corner says, 'relaxed and jovial'. My face and body language say, 'I'm sorry to bother you at home, madam, but I regret to inform you there's been an accident...'

Most football shows feature interchangeable ex-players who trade uncontroversial and uninteresting cliches ad nauseum. The American modus of "fetch the ex-players who'd be most fun on a night out, provide an open bar, team them with one articulate anchor who can steer the show, and let everybody rant at/cuss each other" is far superior. Sure, it results in occasional chaos, horrible predictions and repeated unintelligble exchanges - but the upside is entertainment, and as a bonus, it precipitates occasional pearls of true wisdom which can only be conjured by drunk assholes.

2. A Disappointing Dunk Contest

Much of Chuck's inebriated ire last weekend was reserved for Saturday's dunk contest, which featured very little in the way of memorable jams. Nate Robinson won out over Demar DeRozan in the final, the pair of them having seen off Shannon Brown and Gerald Wallace in the opening round. Now Nate is an unreal athlete, no question, but his being the NBA's dunk champion for an unprecedented 3rd time does not reflect well on the competition.

The NBA and Sprite spent a lot of time and money promoting this year's competition, including a series of expectant ads with guys rapping, heavy on grandiose imagery which is laughable in hindsight. Their drive to hype the contest was prompted Lebron James' announcement last year that he'd enter: he later withdrew, no doubt wary of the possibility of being upstaged. There would be far too many Witnesses and cameras present for his entourage to destroy all the evidence of a loss.

The hype over Shannon Brown's hops turned out to be exactly that (hype) - he threw down standard jams, absent of creativity or spark. Gerald Wallace, who pulled out some incredible moves in 2002, looked so uninterested that you figure he was there involuntarily. DeRozan submitted the best jam of the night (and should've won, really), a reverse after Sonny Weems flicked it off the side of the backboard.



Nate struggled under the "no props or gimmicks" rule, eventually settling on some alley-oops to himself, which were actually secondary to his 5'8 frame in deciding his victory. The unanimous verdict was that there was a total lack of everything the NBA had promised: excitement, invention, creativity, spectacle.

3. Dwyane Wade: All-Star MVP / Lebron James: Do I Not Like That

The All-Star game itself was as expected: fun, high-scoring, and dominated by great plays from the '03 draft class (Wade, Lebron, Bosh and Carmelo). Disappointingly, the ending came down to a free-throw shooting contest, but there was still time for Melo to heave a hilariously terrible shot at the buzzer to seal the West's loss in front of a record crowd.



The race for the game's MVP was intriguing - each of Wade, Lebron, Bosh and Carmelo made their case during the 4th quarter. But Dallas favoured Dwyane yet again, and Lebron's reaction to Wade's receiving the award was priceless (warning: 8MB gif! Totally worth it, though.)