<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"FacebookPinterestGetty Images\n\nThe All-Star Game itself was a good one, with the West holding off a late push by the East to come out on top, 152-149. Kevin Durant won the MVP with 36 points; LeBron James also had 36. But All-Star Weekend isn't just the All-Star Game, and in many ways, the story of 2012 will be the NBA's attempts at changing up a supposedly flawed Rookie-Sophomore game and the enfeebled dunk contest. Otherwise, all you've got is the game on Sunday. Unless, of course, you're on the ground and way too busy with the parties to care about much of anything else.\n\nBBVA Rising Stars Challenge: There's such a thing as failing to see the obvious. That's what happened when, in an attempt to even up the sides in what once was the Rookie-Sophomore game, the NBA had Shaquille O'Neal and Charles Barkley draft first- and second-year players out of a mid pool.\n\nOn paper, this meant we were more likely to see a competitive game, with no team the clear favorite. What no one considered, though, was that old rules attached stakes to the event. The sophomores almost always won, but when they lost, it was a mark of shame against their draft class. By that same token, a rookie class that pulled off the upset could claim to have accomplished something meaningful. Overcoming long odds is no joke, and for the sophomore to get their expected win, there invariably comes some point where they had to clamp down and run away with the game. By being so slanted and so unfair, the Rookie-Sophomore game brought on both desperation and the capacity for humiliation, if not for its full duration.\n\nBy destroying that dynamic, the NBA made the game, now called the BBVA Rising Stars Challenge, into just another exhibition. Maybe the new format came as a relief; maybe it was the carnivalesque atmosphere, complete with a WWE-style entry by Barkley and Shaq, that set the tone. There was no time-honored standard to uphold, or beat, just two of the NBA's biggest hams intent on stealing all the camera time. Team Chuck and Team Shaq were playing for nothing more than the egos of their general managers, if even that (Shaq didn't show up to practice, as Ricky Rubio and Jeremy Lin told us pre-game).\n\nTeam Chuck won, 146-133, in a game that was conspicuously lax on defense by even All-Star standards. Kyrie Irving was the MVP, with 34 points, but the real highlights were Craig Sager referring to Rubio and Lin as \"international,\" a gaffe more suited to the Romney campaign trail, and Greg Monroe's trolling of John Wall, who had decided to turn the last few minutes of the game into his own private dunk contest. It's an old Rookie-Sophomore custom, actually, to stand back and let individuals dunk toward the end. Wall, though, took matters into his own hands, and no one else seemed eager to follow dunks like this:\n\n\n\nOnly one man dared step up to the challenge. Well, sort of. As Wall tossed himself a lob for another trick, this happened:\n\n\n\nIt was funny, it was devilish, and it was almost certainly kind of mean. There's also a pretty tremendous irony built into Monroe's play, since as many have noted, he's notoriously earthbound. And if Wall cared so much about showing off his dunking abilities, he could have entered the Sprite Slam Dunk (we will all just have to get used to that name, but more on that later). Still, the former number one overall pick, and last year's Rookie-Sophomore MVP, is having a less-than-ideal second year, with some very prematurely asking if the Kentucky product is a bust. You couldn't help but feel a little bad for Wall. Then again, if Monroe was playing around, he could not have picked a more appropriate time or place.\n\nIncidentally, if Monroe and Wall had done this, planned, in the dunk contest, it would have changed the game once and forever. Speaking of which ...\n\nSprite Slam Dunk: As a culture, we're forever obsessed with \"fixing\" things so that, presumably, we may proclaim them \"back.\" The Sprite Slam Dunk, sometimes known as the Sprite Slam Dunk Contest, is one of the rare cases where these two conceits are intermingled in a cycle of birth and destruction. The numerically judged dunking of NBA players in an uncontested setting helped catapult the league to new heights of popularity in the '80s. Then, just as abruptly, Michael Jordan decided to stop competing, wanting no longer to be known only as a dunker. To prove his point, he competed in the three-point contest in 1990, with disastrous results.\n\nThe dunk contest went through a post-Jordan lull, before a run in the late '90s and early '00s that saw the likes of Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, and especially Vince Carter boost their reputations through competing in it. Carter, though, did such a ridiculous number on the contest that it again was plunged into darkness, despite the best efforts of very capable dudes like Jason Richardson. Attempts have been made to \"fix\" the event through the introduction of gimmicks like the Dunk Wheel, which assigned players a past dunk to replicate; Dwight Howard and Blake Griffin brought it \"back\" on their own, through prop-heavy routines that were more like comedy sketches than acts of aerial artistry.\n\nWhich brings us to this year's Sprite Slam Dunk, and the John Wall showcase that closed out the BBVA Rising Stars Challenge. It's long been assumed that the likes of LeBron James and Derrick Rose, young players known for their sky-high athleticism, don't compete because of Jordan's legacy. What's more, they have little to gain in the way of exposure, and their dunking prowess is all over SportsCenter every night anyway. Howard and Griffin, great as they are, seemed interested in it more as ways to play up their personalities and respective senses of humor (always a problem for big men) than to convince anyone of their dynamism.\n\nWall badly wanted to show off to the world that he could dunk with the best of them. However, he wasn't in the contest, even though I'm sure the NBA asked after him. The real problem might be that, when credible young players do enter, they're invariably robbed. Most infamously, Andre Iguodala dunked in an alley-oop off the back of the backboard, and ended up losing to novelty act Nate Robinson.\n\n\n\nHolly MacKenzie suggested to me that while Wall may very well want to show the world what he's capable of as a dunker, and still believes in the prop-less dunk canvas even post-Vince Carter, he just doesn't trust the event enough to compete. It's not so much that players like Wall are afraid of losing face, but that they don't get the point of entering into it when Sprite Slam Dunk has such a credibility problem.\n\nThis year's contest was just putrid. The Utah Jazz's Jeremy Evans, who replaced the injured Iman Shumpert, took the title with a two-ball dunk that as Dan Devine points out, is a lesser version of what JaVale McGee was doing last year in a loss. This wasn't exactly a crowning year for orignality. Evans also dunked over very short comedian Kevin Hart. All in all, there were three dunks that night that involved someone dunking over someone else. Evans's use of a Karl Malone jersey bit off of Josh Smith's Dominique Wilkins homage in 2005. Chase Budinger recreated Cedric Ceballos's blindfolded dunk of 1992.\n\nThe NBA doesn't just need to worry about getting names in the contest\u2014it also needs to make sure players are convinced of its integrity. No one wants to be associated with something that's largely seen as a joke. I'm not sure how to fix the dunk contest, but maybe the trick is to stop thinking this way, and instead focus next year on getting a group of players who simply won't mess around. That way, the winner is guaranteed to be deserving. It's not a \"if you build it, they will come\" issue, but a situation where bringing dunkers there will purify the space.\n\nBy the way, word is that Wall has volunteered his services for next year, and Thunder big man Serge Ibaka asked in again. Maybe this year was rock bottom, to the point where players decided that enough is enough."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/whats-still-wrong-with-all-star-weekend>