NBA All-Star Skills Competition 2009

Some noticeable events that occured during the 2009 All Star Skills Competition in Phoenix, Arizona:

Shooting Stars - the Detroit Piston team won.  The home team of Phoenix made it to the finals against Detroit, and proceeded to make their first 5 shots.  But they couldn't nail the 6th halfcourt shot, missing 21 attempts before nailing the 22nd, which was about 10 seconds too late.

Skills - Nobody was going to touch the 25.5 second record in this competition, because nobody was hustling.  Derrick Rose won the competition with plenty of time to spare, and even had a backwards dunk to put an exclamation mark on his victory.  I'm surprised D-Wade didn't compete.  Mo Williams had a shot at making it to the finals, but some random ball boy poked his head out during the bounce pass portion, delaying Williams for about a second or two, which was the difference in his elimination out of the first round.

Speaking of D-Wade, he had some interesting attire on.

3-point competition: I really thought Jason Kapono was going to 3-peat, which would have been phenomenal.  He was the only pure shooter out in the roster, but went cold in the final round, scoring only 14 points.  Daequan Cook of the Miami Heat took the title, with the night's highest score of 18 in the first round, 15 in the second round to tie Rashard Lewis, and 17 in the tie-breaker (vs Lewis's 7) to win the title.

Slam Dunk Competition - The main event.  Watching the first two rounds, only one thought came to my mind: Dwight Howard should be banned from this event.  He has a 2 foot advantage over everyone, and he can jump as high as them.  Howard proved my point by dunking into a 12 foot hoop without much of a running start.  I'll put money down that he can dunk into a 13 and a half foot hoop.  But Nate Robinson was not going to be outdone by Superman, as he put on his Kryptonite uniform and dunked over Dwight Howard to win the fan voting 52% to 48%.  And his "Kryptonite Dance" was classy.

And how about Lebron James' response to Dwight Howard's exploitation of athleticism: He announced to the audience in Phoenix and on national television that he was going to put his name in the 2010 Dunk Contest roster preliminarily.  And now the waiting game begins.

Reggie Miller must've woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, because he was dishing out hateful remarks one after another.