Well, the All-Star Break in L.A. has come and gone, and the Raptors start the rest of the season. They did so last night in Charlotte, North Carolina vs the Bobcats. Needless to say, they lost 114-101, giving the team a 15-42 mark. Their biggest deficit was 22 points. Sonny Weems was the best Raptor on the night, scoring 19 points on 9-13 shooting while playing 37 minutes. Jerryd Bayless, on the other hand, was an absolute embarrassment with no shots made and giving up 4 turnovers. He did however, score 11 points and dish out 10 assists. As well, Charlotte held a 42-26 advantage in terms of free throw attempts. This gives Toronto their 11th straight road loss, which ties a team record. Let's hope they do better tonight at home against the Bulls. Speaking of Chicago, the Raptors received a new player from them before the game vs Charlotte. His name is James Johnson. Toronto was able to get him because of the draft pick they recieved from Miami in the Chris Bosh sign-and-trade deal that took place in the offseason. Here is the game recap and here is the story on James Johnson. That's all for now on the Raptors.
Now, I want to talk about the All-Star Weekend that took place in Los Angeles, California from Friday February 18-Sunday February 20 at the Staples Center. This is where the L.A. Clippers and the L.A. Lakers both play their home games. The Rookie Challenge was fun to watch and I truly enjoyed it as it turned out to be my favourite moment in the weekend. DeMar DeRozan represented Toronto in the game and played on the Sophomore Team. He had a solid night, scoring 14 points in the 1st half including 3 impressive dunks, one of which was an alley-oop. The real star of the night however, was John Wall of the Washington Wizards who played on the Rookie team. He dished out an event record 22 assists to grab the MVP honours. DeMarcus Cousins of the Sacramento Kings also played for the Rookies and scored a game-high 32 points. Here's the recap. Next up was All-Star Saturday Night with the Shooting Stars, Skills Challenge, 3-point Contest, and Slam Dunk Contest. The Shooting Stars event was next, which consisted of 4 teams: Atlanta, Texas, Chicago, and L.A. Each team had a retired player, a current player, and a WNBA player as participants. The idea is that each team has to make one shot from 5 different areas on the court, including a half-court shot. Whoever does it in the fastest time wins. There are 2 rounds to the event, which Team Atlanta won because Team Texas took longer to finsih in the 2nd round than Atlanta did. It was amusing for me to see guys of the likes of Kenny Smith, who is a TNT broadcaster now, try to shoot baskets, especially the half-court ones. Anyways, here's the recap. Next, the Skills Challenge took center stage with Stephen Curry from Golden State, Chris Paul of the New Orleans Hornets, Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls, John Wall of the aformentioned Wizards, and Russsel Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder all taking part. The idea of this contest is that you have to go through an obstacle course, first making a layup, then throwing a chest-pass into a basket-like structure, zig-zagging around pylons, making a free-throw line shot, throwing a bounce pass through another basket structure, zig-zagging again and finally making a layup or dunk to complete the course. The contestant who does this in the fastest time wins and there are 2 rounds. Stephen Curry won the contest and took home the honours. He is the son of former NBA sharp shooter Dell Curry. Here's the recap. This contest is always enjoyable for me as I get to see how good these players are at speed, dribbling, and passing. The next contest was the 3-point shootout which featured 6 players: James Jones of the Miami Heat, Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics (who won it last year in Dallas), Daniel Gibson of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Ray Allen of the Boston Celtics, and two other players that I forget the name of. This contest consists of 6 racks of balls with the regular balls earning the contestant 1 point and the special coloured balls earning the contestant 2 points. The idea is to make as many 3-point baskets as you can in 60 seconds. The player with the most makes wins and there are 2 rounds. The winner this year was James Jones of the Miami Heat. Here's the recap. Now, I have to rant. The final event was the slam dunk contest for Saturday Night which consisted of 4 players: DeMar DeRozan from the Toronto Raptors, Serge Ibaka from the Oklahoma City Thunder, Blake Griffin from the Los Angeles Clippers, and Javale McGee from the Washington Wizards. The idea of the contest is that you have to throw a dunk down in 2 minutes, and you are rated on a score of 30-60 based on whether you complete the dunk and if your dunk is creative, original, and gets the crowd pumped. At least, that's how it's SUPPOSED to be. Lately, however, it's all been about props that are brought in by the players to do their dunks, and this year was simply out of control. First of all, Javale McGee cheated to get to the final round. Both of his first-round dunks were dunks that utilized 2 or more balls with the 2nd dunk having 3 balls. This is a clear ripoff of Larry Nance who won the first NBA dunk contest in 1984. Nothing great here, but the idiot crowd and judges thought his 2nd dunk worthy of a 49! Serge Ibaka had a good night, with one of his dunks being a "take off from the free throw line" attempt. This was good, but as Ibaka is a 7-footer, it just looked awkward to me. However, yet again the people proved idiotic as they gave him a higher dunk rating (45) than DeRozan's amazing bounce off the side of the net and wrap around for a reverse dunk(44)! The other amazing dunk from DeRozan was a beautiful throw the ball in the air and scoop around for a little reverse slam that scored a perfect 50, and rightly so! Of course, he was booted out by McGee's antics. Finally, we touch on Blake Griffin of the Clippers. One of his dunks was an updated alley-oop version of the famous elbow-hanger that Vince Carter pulled off in 2000 while still a member of the Raptors. To me, this is what the dunk contest SHOULD be about, not gimmicks or props and other crap. The final dunk from Griffin however, was anything BUT great, as it was just him jumping over the hood of a car. Are you kidding me? THIS is what wins a dunk contest? Wow, this is pathetic. In my opinion, based on the creativity of the "pure dunks" - the ones without any props, DeMar DeRozan should of won the dunk contest. However, the masses would rather mindlessly enjoy prop using than judge by actual creativity. Here is the pathetic recap given by the NBA on the dunk contest. What was also pathetic was the loud-mouthed Kenny Smith, always screaming, "Oh! Oh!" after every prop dunk and the silly choir arrangements to prepare for dunkers such as Griffin was also crappy. Finally, we go to the All-Star game itself and I also have to rant here a little bit. Why? Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers received the MVP trophy and is now tied with Bob Petit for the most All-Star MVP's with 4. He got it by being a complete jerk and a selfish balhog scoring 37 points on 14-26 shooting. What really gets me is how the league presented it: only pointing out the most All-Star mvp's bit that I mentioned earlier. The entire game centred around Kobe Bryant and LeBron James (who plays now for the Miami Heat). Lebron became the 2nd player in All-Star history to record a triple-double with 29 points, 12 rebounds, and 10 assists. (Michael Jordan did it in 1997 when the weekend was held in Cleveland by getting 14 points, 11 rebounds, and 11 assists.) The pathetic recap that the NBA gave out only focuses on Kobe and lashes out at us calling us, "conspiracy theorists." It also rags on Amare Stoudamire of the New York Knicks for calling out Kobe on his selfishness. You'll have to read it to believe it! Here it is. Lastly, I just want to link to a few Youtube videos where a fellow NBA fan gives my take on this. Here they are:
Part 1 of All-Star Discussion
Part 2 of All-Star Discussion
Part 3 of All-Star Discussion
By the way, the guy behind those videos is Bruce Blitz. Good stuff!
Anyways, I have to go. This has been a LONG posting! The Raptors play tonight at home vs the Bulls. It starts at 7 PM on Sportsnet One. Have a good day!
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