Monday, February 18, 2008

NBA All-Star Game recap

By Rick Morris

Even by the standards of recent NBA All-Star Games, tonight's affair was typified by rampant streetball elements abhorrent to those of us who grew up on a better brand of hoops than this. There's little to note substantively about the game except to report that the East won, 134-128. Lebron James won the MVP award for the second time in three years, a decision that made great sense as he filled the stat sheet with 27 points, nine assists and eight rebounds.

FDH Senior Editor Jason Jones, who loves his hoops, did not agree with my take on the game and he found it a fun, refreshing break from the action seen during the regular season. That is his right, of course, and if he sees fit to post any further thoughts here on All-Star Weekend I'm sure they will be very well-reasoned from his point of view. As for me, I find the complete lack of defense (embodied by a pathetic sequence in which Jason Kidd didn't so much as raise an arm to stop a West player going by him in the lane), the run-and-gun junk with sloppy, inaccurate showboat passes, the obsession with dunks and the rampant ball-hogging to be completely disgraceful -- or in other words, completely equivalent to Charles Barkley's illiterate basketball and political takes.

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