Austin- All-Star Weekend (T)

The entire all-star weekend line ups are set in stage, from the dunk contest all the way down to the big dance. Kyrie Irving, Dwyane Wade, Paul George, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony. DeMar DeRozan, Paul Millsap and John Wall will all be making their first all-star game appearance for the Easten Conference. Joining them coming off the bench are Chris Bosh, Roy Hibbert, Joakim Noah and Joe Johnson. LeBron will be making his 10th all-star game appearance, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade will be making their 9th appearances. 

For the western conference, we also see 3 new faces. Stephen Curry will make his first appearance, and he also cracks the starting lineup. This comes as quite the surprise to me. I think we all expected Chris Paul to be the starting point guard in the west, especially since he was the MVP last year. The NBA doesn’t usually take chances in the all-star game. And we don’t often see many changes. Anyways, the rest up the lineup reads; Kevin Durant, Kevin Love, Blake Griffin and Kobe Bryant. Anthony Davis and Damian Lillard both make their first appearance to the All-Star game in their sophomore seasons respectively. Dwight Howard, Dirk Nowitzki, James Harden, Tony Parker, Chris Paul, and LaMarcus Aldridge round out the West roster.

For a minute let’s just pretend that the players take this game seriously. It’s could get pretty interesting. The west is staring a point guard, a shooting guard, a power forward and a center. Traditional. Where the East is starting a point guard, a shooting guard, a swing man and 2 small forwards. So there’s obviously some match ups that’ll be interesting to watch. Or, I mean, they would be interesting to watch if these guys played any defense at all what so ever. But it’s all good. Most people are looking forward to other events throughout the weekend.

The dunk contest this year has some supreme athletic characters, and some big names. Something we haven’t always seen in years past. To put it into perspective, this could be the best dunk contest line up since at least Vince Carter, and maybe even since Jordan. John Wall, Paul George and Terrance Ross represent the east, and Harrison Barnes, Damian Lillard and Ben Macklemore represent the west. These are a bunch of young guys who spend a lot of their time in games with their heads above the rim. Rumor has it that Macklemore is going to attempt a 720 dunk, but we’re just going to have to wait and see. Paul George is my personal pick to win the contest, mostly because of that crazy 360 windmill dunk that he performed earlier in the season in a game. In conclusion, it’s not very often that we see something new in the dunk contest, but this year we have some creative young minds with some insane athleticism.

Over to the 3 point contest from Foot Locker, we see new faces here as well. Aaron Afflalo, Bradley Beal, Kyrie Irving and Joe Johnson make up the East contestants. In the west, Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, Kevin Love and Marco Belineli round out the contestants. I’m glad that for once this contest doesn’t just consist of big name players who aren’t even really shooters, but we actually have some of the best shooters in the league to check out. My personal pick for the winner is Steph Curry. It’ll be interesting.

Things to watch for-

1.      Damin Lillard is the first player ever to be in all 3 major all-star weekend contests.

2.      Joe Johnson is being called the worst all-star game selection since 2001.

3.      Joe’s gotta make a name for himself this weekend.

4.      He should do it by wearing a different pair of J’s every 5 minutes.

5.      Ugliest jerseys ever?