An All-Star Weekend to Forget

SIN CITY - This weekend's all-star festivities were a disappointment to say the least. Perhaps spending the week in Las Vegas drained all of the emotion and energy out of the players, or perhaps they just didn't care to put on a good show (Although apparently Charles Barkley felt like kissing another guy to get a rise out of the John Amaechi's of the world, or to punish the Tim Hardaways). In lieu of this awful television experience, I feel it necessary to list the top 5 miserable parts of this weekend's mishap:

5. Shaquille O'neal looked like he has never played basketball before, much like he has looked throughout this past few weeks of the regular season. I mean this guy is missing dunks, clanging baby hooks off the backboard (I know he's done this before, but it's never been this ugly), and if he wasn't the best 7'1" dancer on the planet he'd be higher on this list.

4. Jason Kapono wins the 3-pt. shootout, showing us that you can get a trophy in this league even if you can't dribble a basketball (Yes, I know he has the highest 3-pt. percentage of all time, but even so nobody wanted to see him win this event, especially not us Clevelanders).

3. The Dunk Contest in general was terrible and non-dramatic. Nate Robinson did as we expected and tried the same dunk 3,000,000 times, and Dwight Howard, who had the only really creative idea in the contest, was left out of the finals. Congratulations to Gerald Green for reenacting Dee Brown's old school dunk, and then going ahead and looking up at the rim at the last second to complete the "Blind" dunk (Was anyone else hoping that the judges had their unis on under their suits and would come out and have their own contest after the losers that were in the real one finished boring us?)

2. The All-Star game itself had about 3 highlights that are even worth watching. Kudos to Lebron for trying the off the backboard dunk, and then not realizing that Amare Stoudemire was in the way and toppling to the ground scaring the living hell out of every Cavs fan who hadn't turned the game off already. Perhaps the NBA should change their new marketing slogan from "Will you be watching when..." to "Will anybody watch this again?"

1. Wayne Newton should be banished from any sports event, and also from his own Vegas show. I don't know what I hated more, the fact that he wasn't actually singing or that he kept coming back and singing more songs when I thought he was done (Also, didn't it look like he was singing into a golden dildo instead of a microphone? Maybe thats why the sound was off). I know now one sight that I won't have to see when I go to vegas this summer, in fact I'll cancel the trip all together if he's even in town that weekend.

Picture courtesy of NBA.com