Everything’s Bigger in Texas

You know the old saying, "Everything's bigger in Texas."

NBA All-Star Weekend certainly proved that statement to be true over the weekend.

Unfortunately for the league that I love dearly, the one thing that was bigger than I could have hoped for this weekend: disappointment.

Right from the beginning, disappointment was in the air in Dallas. First, the city had a record snowstorm that blanketed the area with almost a foot of snow on the eve of All-Star Weekend.

A very ominous start if I've ever seen one.

In the week leading up to the game, we got even more disappointing news: Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Brandon Roy, and Allen Iverson would all miss the game due to injury.

Iverson had no business being there in the first place, but it's disappointing when one team loses three guards before the game even starts.

That was followed by the injury to Derrick Rose that took him out of the skills competition on Saturday night and limited his effectiveness during the actual game on Sunday.

And of course, there was the worst news imaginable that came from All-Star Weekend, news that most people have spent the past year or so choosing to ignore: a lockout is inevitable after this current CBA expires.

I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to elaborate on this later, but the long and short of it is this: the owners and players union are remarkably far apart in negotiations and the odds of both sides reaching an agreement in time to avoid a lockout are slim to none.

We're already past three strikes for the festivities, and we haven't even gotten to the action on the floor. That's where the real disappointment set in.

NBA All-Star Saturday is my favorite day of the year. I realize that it's filled with exhibitions, and that none of the stuff that happens really matters, but I don't care. I love it anyway.

That's because, for die hard NBA fans, All-Star Weekend is our Super Bowl. It's a combination of time and place that happens once a year that brings anyone who's ever been anyone in the history of the NBA together in one place. The people-watching is just as much fun as the actual events.

I love NBA All-Star Weekend so much that I wanted to write about how much I liked this season's event, I really did.

But after Saturday night's debacle from start to finish, I just couldn't think of anything positive to say.

It all started off with what I can imagine will be the last live game of H-O-R-S-E on TV in NBA history. I like to concept of the H-O-R-S-E game, but if they're going to keep doing it, it needs to be taped in advance, heavily edited, and shown that way.

The live broadcast had no flow to it whatsoever, and with all the commercials breaks, no one was able to get into a rhythm. It didn't get entertaining until TNT ran out of time and it turned into a shootout from the top of the key between Rajon Rondo and Kevin Durant (you can imagine who won).

From there, there was the 30-minute yawn-fest that is the Haier Shooting Stars Competition. To be honest, this was the one even from Saturday that didn't disappoint me. I knew going into the event that it was going to be a waste of time so I wasn't disappointed when that is exactly what it was: a waste of time.

No one cares about the WNBA, so stop trying to incorporate it into All-Star Weekend.

Now comes disappointment on a personal level. I hate Steve Nash. I hate the Phoenix Suns. I hate when anything good happens to them as an organization.

So to me, this is the epitome of disappointment.

Then comes disappointment personified, part two.

I've written already this season about how ridiculously cocky the Celtics got as a team once the front office assembled the "Big Three." That last thing I wanted to see this All-Star Weekend was for this fading fast group of guys given a reason to celebrate.

Yet there it was, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, doing a choreographed handshake on the floor after Pierce won the three-point shootout.

The only thing that could have made my night worse is if Nate Robinson, quite possibly my least favorite human being on the planet, won the dunk contest.

Dammit.

It's bad enough that Nate gets another 15 minutes of fame, but what makes it even worse is that this was by far the worst dunk contest in NBA history.

There couldn't have been any less energy in the crowd. You could hear a pin drop after every dunk. I spent two months hearing "Let Shannon [Brown] Dunk," and when he did, I felt bad for him. Really. That's got to be embarrassing. The entire Internet population is pulling for you, and you did that?

Robinson won the event by default, and unless the NBA can get some stars to participate next season, they need to scrap the whole thing entirely.

This year's version of the dunk contest featured no imagination, nothing new, and most of all, no likable personalities. The dunk contest is as much about rooting for the participants as it is rooting for a great dunk. Once Shannon Brown laid an egg with his first dunk, you knew right away that there was going to be nothing good that came of the event.

However, along the theme of "everything's bigger in Texas", there were a few positives that came out of the weekend. Namely, the 108,713 people that filled Cowboys Stadium to set the record for the most fans ever at a basketball game.

I have to hand it to Mark Cuban and Jerry Jones. They spent weeks promoting the fact that they were going to get six figures into the building, with Jerry Jones doing his "1-0-0" schtick about 50 times on television in the week leading up to the game.

I'll admit, I was skeptical that they'd be able to pull it off, but I was pleasantly surprised when the numbers were announced that not only did they set the attendance record, but they shattered the 100,000 people mark that I thought was out of reach.

In my mind, there was no way that you could convince people to come to a basketball game and sit upwards of 300 feet away from the action. Kudos to them for pulling that off and delivering on their promise.

And, kudos to the players, as well. As a fan, I was disappointed that some of the biggest names in the sport didn't participate due to injury. But that didn't stop the players that did participate from putting on a great show.

I posted a tweet late in the game that said, "Can't ask for much more than this from an ASG. Lots of exciting plays, and just a 4 point game with 6 minutes left #AS10".

It's the oldest All-Star Game cliché in the book, but the players usually crank it up in the fourth quarter. That's exactly what happened here. The West made a game out of it, the crowd got involved, and the game came down to the final play.

In an exhibition that more often than not ends in a blowout, it was nice to see players and coaches (the East kept scoring out of timeouts?!) giving it their all down the stretch.

It would have taken an All-Star Game for the ages to erase all the bad memories that Saturday night produced. It wasn't quite that, but it was a good enough game (especially considering there was no Kobe or CP3 down the stretch) that I didn't go to bed with a bad taste in my mouth from what was billed as the biggest All-Star Weekend in NBA history.

Like I said before, I'm a sucker for All-Star Weekend. As bad as things were on Saturday, a halfway decent game on Sunday has me hooked back for next season. Let's just hope they do something about Saturday night.

Staples Center in Los Angeles, you are officially on the clock for AS11.