What follows is a series of critical observations concerning Saturday night's climactic bonanza, the dunk contest. Momentarily suspend any disbelief stemming from the fact that the observer has never dunked on a 10-foot hoop in his life.
Disposing of Smith and Hakim Warrick midway through the contest made perfectly obvious sense and left the Sixers' Andre Iguodala to contend for the title against diminutive (officially listed as 5'9") Knicks guard Nate Robinson. In his first dunk, Iguodala executed one of the most dazzling individual maneuvers ever showcased on an NBA stage. He raced from behind the basket to receive an Allen Iverson pass off the back of the backboard, ascended toward the rim while miraculously ducking his head to prevent a collision with the glass, and threw down a reverse one-handed dunk in stride. Besides its physical splendor, the dunk set a new precedent by founding a genre hitherto completely uncharted. The dunk rightly received a perfect score of 50, as did Robinson's second dunk, a midget collaboration with tiny 1986 dunk champ Spud Webb in which Robinson took a pass from Webb and jumped clear over his head en route to a one-handed full-extension slam. The Robinson-Iguodala two-dunk final round showdown ended in a 94-94 tie, and necessitated a dunk-off to break the deadlock. Robinson emerged victorious in the overtime stanza, to the utter dismay of every dunk aficionado on earth.
Both "50" dunks deserved the plaudits they drew. But the scoring of the other two final round dunks-and of the tie-breaker dunks-was appallingly absurd. On his first final round offering, Robinson executed an impressive but unoriginal mid-air between-the-legs dunk. Incidentally, it took Nate about 30 futile attempts to get it right, á la Chris "Birdman" Andersen's horrifying showing in 2005. Somehow, the judges blessed Robinson with an inexplicably magnanimous score of 44, as if keeping the audience waiting in empathetic disbelief should not count against the transgressor. The unfortunate element is that Iguodala's far superior non-50 final round dunk-a fresh combination of grace and power resulting in a sideways behind-the-back righty finish-received a paltry 44 as well.
In the dunk-off, the judges erred once more by favoring Robinson's awkward scissor-legged off-the-backboard throwdown-which, again, took about 45 minutes to execute decently-over Iguodala's perfectly acceptable between-the-legs reverse slam.
The bottom line is that the judges-and the audience-unfairly favored the little man purely on account of his size. You might counter by arguing that such favoritism is warranted because dunking is harder for height-challenged folk, but I posit that it's even tougher for a big guy to dunk with finesse and style. Andre, you're the '06 champ in my book.
Dunking isn't back without stars
Over each of the past two All-Star weekends, Kenny Smith and Magic Johnson have proudly declared that the dunk contest "is back" after a five-or-so year lull. I'm not convinced. Josh Smith fizzled this year, and the excitement generated by Nate Robinson's stature can last only so long. The dunk contest will be back when it features LeBron James, Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady and Steve Francis. Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins-two of the game's brightest all-around stars in the 1980s-used to headline the dunk contest each year. What explains the stigma surrounding contemporary dunk contests that prevents stars' participation? Why in their opinion do the skills competition and the three-point shootout not likewise offend their stardom?
Bryant's big brother stint is just an act
All weekend TNT replayed footage portraying Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant as the big brother and savior of Rayshawn Brite, a seven-year-old child whose family suffered terrible losses in Hurricane Katrina. Video showed Bryant's initial visit with Brite at a Katrina charity game in Houston and his follow-up meeting with the boy in the Lakers' locker room at a recent game. In the locker room encounter, Kobe appears warm, effusive, even enveloping. He asks Rayshawn a litany of questions and appears to show genuine interest in the child's life. Kobe introduces him to the Lakers and, in the scene's final moments, wipes a tear from his own face. The moment was so perfect, even I felt great about Kobe for a second. And then I realized-what a perfect photo op in the continued effort to slowly but surely rehabilitate a damaged image. If you really cared about a Katrina victim and wanted to touch a life, would you request that a camera crew be present to capture the moment?
Hot-dogging costs US a gold
A last-second giveaway at least on the order of Leon Lett's Super Bowl anti-heroics occurred in Torino, Italy last week in the women's Snowboard Cross race when American Lindsey Jacobellis grabbed her board to showboat on the penultimate jump. She fell, squandered a huge lead and earned silver instead of gold. All of this would conceivably be forgivable if not for Jacobellis' inane post-race comments. "I was having fun," she told the Associated Press. "Snowboarding is fun. I was ahead. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd. I messed up. Oh well, it happens." She is either in denial or remarkably stupid. Her disgraceful attitude insults every American Olympian and athlete.