Nate was great, but the judging was late...

Three things from the dunk contest:

a) Josh Smith is an idiot…dude puts a strip of tape on the floor about 2 feet behind the free throw line leading the crowd to believe he was about to do the Bob Beamon of long distance dunks and then jumped from a completely different spot about four feet to the right and two feet closer…

b) Andre Iguodala got robbed…that “bottom of the backboard behind the glass pass from Allen Iverson” dunk was ridiculous…

c) You know how someone will claim that they can bench press their body weight? Well, when Nate Robinson jumped Spud Webb, he basically vertical-ed himself…so to speak…it sounds better than jumped himself, which has an entirely different connotation…

By the way, Spud Webb is not missing too many meals these days eh? Dude has got a fat head…

The 2 Raptors involved in All-Star weekend acquitted themselves quite well:

Chris Bosh played 17 minutes, had 8 points on 3-7 from the floor and 2-3 from the line with 8 rebounds and 2 assist…and I loved the little duck walk after drilling the “cocked behind the head one hander and one” on the break…

Charlie Villanueva had 18 points on 8-15 from the floor, including 1-2 from three, and 1 for 2 from the line with 12 rebounds and 1 assist…

Puff the Magic Dolphin or as he is more widely known Miami running back Ricky Williams has violated the NFL's substance abuse policy for a fourth time and is facing a one-year suspension from the league, Denver television station KDVR reported on Sunday. The Miami Herald, citing two sources of its own, confirmed the station's report that Williams has violated the policy, although neither source would say whether Williams had failed a drug test or if he had missed a required test, which also is a violation.

Warning…you will waste hours on this: http://games.espn.go.com/nba/features/trademachine

Hmmm…apparently the Orlando Magic have an all-female trampoline dunk squad who dunk off a trampoline and they're all amazingly hot. And at the end of their routine they all pile up on each other on the mat…wow…

Trade Rumour: Denver sends PG Earl Watson and SG Voshon Lenard to Sacramento for SG Bonzi Wells…

Word is the Raptors are interested in bringing in Michael Curry in some capacity in the front office or as a potential spy in the locker room…

During a press conference to announce the 16 finalists for the NBA Hall of Fame, Charles Barkley, who is eligible to be voted into the Hall this year, had this to say about Steve Nash: "What he did last year for the Phoenix Suns was pretty incredible," Sir Charles said. "But what he's done this year is even better. There's not a person who thought the Suns would be winning their division. He lost (Amare) Stoudemire, but he also lost Joe Johnson and Quentin Richardson. And the guys Phoenix is plugging into the lineup, we didn't even know they were alive last year.” When pressed for some more MVP candidates he answered: "Nobody. Nobody ... Elton Brand, maybe," Barkley said. "Chauncey Billups is having a fantastic season, I love Chauncey. But my question to you would be, if the Pistons lost Chauncey Billups, would they still be the best in the East. I think they would be."

1) Chris Ballard of Si.com with his taker on the AS Game:

NBA All-Star Game - Blown alley-oops and celeb sightings in Houston

From the city that the NBA insisted on calling "H-Town" all weekend, it's the 2006 NBA All-Star game. We pick up the action as seen from press row ...

PREGAME - The players move from locker room to warm-ups to orchestrated intros, with everything planned down to the minute, literally. Raymond Ridder of the Warriors shows me a media timetable: for example, at 7:17 PM, Steve Nash is to meet TNT's David Aldridge for a "one-minute interview." DA also gets a one-minute shot at LeBron James. It's the journalistic equivalent of speed dating. The Eastern starters are introduced and, at what appears to be the urging of Shaquille O'Neal, bust into various comical dance moves. The West starters respond with some sort of pseudo-breakdance line that begins with Kobe Bryant and flows to his left, ending with Yao Ming doing a passable shoulder-pop robot move. It is a rare glimpse of NBA stars, generally so posed and reserved, acting goofy and enjoying themselves. It is especially telling to see Kobe -- who last year in Denver offered up a jutted-lip frown during the intros -- cackling and grooving. How a year and the settlement of a trial can change a guy. It's also easy to spot the first-timers. On the Western team, Pau Gasol and Tony Parker look genuinely touched to be introduced, as does Rip Hamilton for the East. With his puffy beard and scraggly hair, Gasol also looks like he should be in a '70s biopic about Cat Stevens. The national anthem is sung by Destiny's Child and it's quite good, full of merging harmonies and high notes. It brings to mind what will always be the standard-bearer -- the 1983 All-Star rendition by Marvin Gaye in which he somehow made the dawn's early light and the twilight's last gleaming sound like sexual metaphors.

0:00 -- The All-Stars take the floor in uniforms that look like sartorial representations of a diet soda can. The Eastern players wear blue shorts and jerseys that are striated blue rising to white, with a little star and futuristic font numbers. One half expects it to read "Pepsi One" across the shoulders. Combined with the various tights being worn (Tracy McGrady wears a red one, Dwyane Wade sports two black, Shaq has one red, Vince Carter two black), the ensembles are quite garish. The way we look back on certain sports fashions -- short shorts, the old Pittsburgh Pirates hats -- and consider them quintessentially dated, we will look back on these uniforms and tights. We already are.

FIRST QUARTER - As for the starters, the majority of the Western All-Stars were not born in the mainland U.S. (Tim Duncan, Yao, Nash). Five years ago, this would have been a story; now it's no

8:20 -- Allen Iverson brings the ball upcourt and launches an alley-oop to Carter that sails so far above his head that one is tempted to think Iverson did it purposefully, like a QB throwing the ball out of bounds when nobody's open. This is to be the theme of the night; guys who don't usually throw lob passes proving why that is the case. Any time Shawn Marion, Carter, Wade or, for that matter, anyone but Nash runs the wing, another All-Star decides to chuck the ball in the general vicinity of the top of the backboard. In the first six minutes of the first quarter alone, the Eastern team piles up six turnovers on bad alley-oops. It's reminiscent of Nate Robinson in the dunk contest, and not in a good way.

3:38 -- All four Pistons come into the game together, alongside Paul Pierce. Pierce looks a bit rusty but appears to be enjoying himself. This brings to mind a story relayed earlier by Brian Gleason of the Celtic staff: During the Saturday media session at the Convention Center, Steven A. Smith came up to Paul Pierce. Pierce greeted him enthusiastically, then commended Smith. "Hey man," Pierce said, "I love PTI!"

3:47 -- Courtside we have: Jamie Foxx in a Dodgers hat, in discussion with Ludacris; George Bush Sr, not in discussion with Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas (though Fergie does talk to Wade and Kobe during the game); next to Foxx is Eva Longoria, who has been omnipresent this weekend. She coached a celebrity basketball team, was all over the TNT coverage and appears frequently on Diamond Vision. At halftime, she poses with Ludacris, the guy from Scrubs and Queen Latifah for a semicircle of photographers. They smile, put arms around waists, turn this way, turn that way. Latifah is wearing a Jordan pink tracksuit, sunglasses and drinking what appears to be a strawberry colada. You will probably see this shot in People magazine in three days. Rappers, actresses, paparazzi: the excesses of the weekend are well-documented. Think Hummer limousines, extravagant parties, women walking around in leather tops so tight it looks like 10 pounds of butter has been stuffed into a five-pound sack. If you aren't driving an Escalade, you might as well not be driving (which also described much of the non-existent traffic flow near Westheimer Road, which resembled a Cadillac parking lot most of the time). Not all the players are rolling that way, however. When I flew out on Friday morning from Oakland on Southwest, Warriors guard Mickael Pietrus (not in the game, but coming to hang out, apparently) was on the flight as well. Since Southwest doesn't have first class, Pietrus was packed in with the rest of us, in Southwest's open seating scheme. In his case, he was scrunched into a middle seat, legs up to his neck, a plastic container of to-go food in his lap and a Bluetooth headset in his ear. He appeared unfazed and, while it seems weird to commend an NBA player for doing something normal human beings do all the time, this did make him likeable.

2:47 -- Parker scores on a layup and Longoria responds with a series of vertical fist pumps. It is the type of repetitive, exuberant gesture that brings to mind John Edwards and the thumbs-up he gave incessantly during the Democratic primaries. It is a fist pump that says, Look at me! My cheering for Tony's basket is just as noteworthy as Tony's basket itself.

2:25 -- Another Parker layup. Longoria pumps that fist as if filming a workout video. I suppose someone has already done this, but it's got to be soon that people start referring to them with a conjoined name. Teva?

1:25 -- More misguided behind-the back passes. Instead of the And1 stuff, how about we see what it looks like for Nash and Yao Ming to run the pick-and-roll together, or a two-man game between Dirk Nowitzki and Kevin Garnett, with Garnett playing the point? You know, real basketball situations with interesting twists. Or maybe this is asking too much of the All-Star Game.

HALFTIME - Not seen in the crowd, at least not yet, is Terrell Owen, though I'm guessing he's here, as he's been very visible this weekend. On Saturday night, he held a party at the Fox Sports Grill in the Galleria area of Houston. The invitation featured a photo of Owens, billed as "NFL Superstar." In it, he is shirtless, dunking a basketball. In the background, there is a soft focus close-up of Owens' face. The invitation does not specify how much Owens can bench, but it wouldn't have been surprising if it did.

THIRD QUARTER

6:23 -- James makes another 3 to give him 22 points and pull the East to within 85-78. He has that look about him, as if he decided ahead of time that he was going to win the MVP. On the West, McGrady has the same look.

5:37 -- Elton Brand knocks down two 17-footers in a row. His jumpshot is the big upgrade to his game this season; he's expanded his range from 14 feet or so to 18 feet. It's reminiscent of the way Karl Malone added the J later in his career. I always find it interesting that players can add jumpshooting range over time -- think of Michael Jordan, Dan Majerle and Malone -- but no one seems to 'add' free throw shooting ability, despite practicing it incessantly. Consider: Shaq has attempted 9,545 free throws in his career -- and that's not counting the untold tens of thousands he's shot in practice -- and this season, his percentage of 48.9 is significantly worse than it was his first year with Orlando (59.2). There aren't many thing in this world that you can do 9,000 times and be worse at than when you started.

2:06 -- Chris Bosh sinks a soft midrange jumper and now has eight points and six rebounds, including an impressive driving dunk through the lane. Flip Saunders has yet to play him with the four Pistons, but it would be interesting to see, as it would represent the alternate reality -- the anti-Darko reality -- of Detroit. Put Bosh at the four, play Rasheed Wallace as a three and bring Tayshaun Prince off the bench. Or, of course, you could play Kelvin Cato's contract at the four.

1:41 -- Commercial break; the cheerleaders take the court. In an NBA first, at least as far as I've seen, they take turns on the dunk trampoline, that staple of NBA entertainment that is usually manned by mascots and gymnasts. After each dunk, missed or made, the girls do parodies -- or maybe they're serious -- of athlete posturing, little wiggles and chest bumps and rump shakes. They miss about a third of their attempts, but who cares -- it's good stuff. The final dunk is by a woman who does a Carter "stick the arm-in-the-basket dunk" that is consummated after soaring over the other dozen cheerleaders, who had lined up, bent over and begun rhythmically shaking their hindquarters. This is a pretty good embodiment of what it is people think the American male wants to see in his sports. The basketball is not enough, the dunks are not enough, the cheerleaders are not enough -- we want our T&A airborne, doing monster jams! If only they'd played Gary Glitter, and the cheerleader had done a beer bong upon landing, the scene would have been complete.

1:40 -- The arena MC pulls Foxx up to answer a trivia question and Foxx, instead of doing so, commandeers the microphone and tells the fans that "Unpredictable, the album is out in stores now!" Thanks for that, Jamie.

FOURTH QUARTER

11:25 -- Another alley oop to Marion that -- surprise -- flies way off the mark. Where are the trampoline-launched cheerleaders when you need them?

9:00 -- Parker makes a fundamentaly-sound entry pass to Garnett in the post. This is what we need more of in the All-Star game! Longoria does not find the entry pass worthy of a fist pump.

3:21 -- The East goes up 117-107 as LeBron follows an Iverson shot (or pass?) off the backboard with a two-hand dunk. He now has 27 to McGrady's 30. If the East wins, it looks good for James for MVP. Despite the high, relatively-close score, the fans are already leaving. It's been a subdued crowd all night. The biggest cheer was for the Miami Heath Golden Oldies dancers, a group of AARP-age women (and two men) who came out and bumped and ground to the strains of Kanye West while wearing Hooters tank-tops. Which, come to think of it, may be the antithesis of what the American male wants in his sports.

1:00 -- Don't know if the play is called by Avery Johnson, but with the West down four, Nash gives the ball to Kobe at halfcourt and clears out. Bryant gets that look in his eye, drives and dunks to pull the West within two. I imagine if there were an NBA hell, players would have to try to guard Kobe in late-game situations without any helpside defense.

:57 -- To fire up the crowd, the DJ plays YMCA. On cue, people stand up and begin gyrating, heads tilted upward to see if they make Diamond Vision. Who are these people who stand and dance at sporting events? It seems they fall into four categories: 1) children exuberantly jumping up an down (which I can understand); 2) middle-aged women shaking their hips with very serious looks on their face, as if they'd just walked off the Soul Train set; 3) drunk fat guys who invariably break into the git-along-little-doggy rump-slap move; 4) exhibitionist women in tight clothes who don't dance so much as pose, arms in the air as to better showcase their assets. Then there is the subset of people who dance until they realize they are on the big screen, at which point they start waving frenetically, which of course is the surest way to make sure they stop showing you on the dance cam.

:29 -- Kobe hits a ridiculous fadeaway to tie it. On the other end, Wade follows an Iverson miss with a putback to put the East up two.

7: -- McGrady misses a final jumper. Dozens of media members, dreading the prospect of overtime after a long weekend, are glad it wasn't Kobe taking the last shot. On McGrady's rebound, Iverson comes up with the ball and goes the other way. The game already won, he throws an alley-oop off the backboard to Carter. Fittingly, Carter blows the dunk.

2) Eric Neel of ESPN.com’s Page 2 reminisces:

"I remember the afro," George Gervin says. "Doc's hair was flying back." Julius "Doctor J" Erving was three big strides into his approach on a foul-line dunk in the 1976 ABA All-Star Slam-Dunk Contest and his mane was roaring. "Even before he took off he was really rolling, his afro blowing," Artis Gilmore remembers. "We all became entangled in what he was going to do." What he did, of course, was rise up -- like a jet fighter lifting off the deck of a carrier -- and throw down, like no one the Jan. 27 sell-out crowd at McNichols Arena in Denver had ever seen before. In that moment -- his takeoff point, an incredible 15 feet from the rim, his 'fro a free-flowing metaphor for creativity and power -- he was the essence of the ABA, and the highest height the upstart league ever reached. And in his bold beautiful flight inevitably subject to the laws of gravity, he was a swan song. The ABA was dying. Three teams (the Baltimore Claws, the San Diego Sails, and the Utah Stars) had folded within the first month of its ninth season, and its two marquee clubs, Erving's New York Nets and David Thompson's Denver Nuggets, were looking to bolt to the NBA. Because the league had an odd number of teams (7) at the time, the ninth American Basketball Association All-Star Game featured a "special" format in which the home-team Nuggets took on an all-star squad made up of players from each of the other six organizations. "The game was always going to be in Denver," said Arthur Hundhausen, lifelong Nuggets fan, and architect of the definitive RememberTheABA.com. "But the Nuggets had to play their way in to being the host team. The arrangement was that the team with the best record on December 31 would get to take on the all-stars. The Nuggets edged out the Nets, and I remember we were all excited because we'd clinched the All-Star Game. It was like we'd won the pennant or something!" On the off-chance that local fervor over "clinching" wasn't enough to pack the house, and with now-or-never hopes of securing a merger between their league and Big Daddy NBA, ABA officials looked to goose-up the festivities. They signed Glenn Campbell and Charlie Rich to play a pre-game concert. "Glenn Campbell … and the Silver Fox," said Gervin laughing. "Can you believe that? I still can't believe it happened." And then Denver general manager Carl Scheer and ABA marketing director Jim Bukata hit on the idea of holding a slam-dunk contest at halftime of the game. "I wanted more than just singers," Scheer said in "Loose Balls," Terry Pluto's must-read history of the ABA. They invited five players, each of whom already would be at the game, to participate. "There was no extra money at that point," said Hundhausen. "They couldn't afford to fly in Darnell Hillman from Indiana, or any of the other good dunkers in the league who weren't already there." The lineup was Gilmore, Larry Kenon, Gervin, Thompson and Erving. Each man was to do five dunks in two minutes, one under the rim, one from the bottom free-throw circle and three freelance approaches from the left, right, and baseline. Points were awarded for artistic ability, imagination, body flow and fan response. "They were sort of making up the rules as they went," said former Basketball Digest managing editor and ABA aficionado Brett Ballantini. "Nothing like it had ever happened before." Iceman was nervous about it. He practiced dunks leading into the contest, thought about what he could bring. "I'd dunked on the playground and in games, but this was different," Gervin said. "I was practicing and trying to come up with some kind of creativity, but you know all that goes out the window once you get in front of 15,000 fans and dunk against Julius and David Thompson! It wasn't like they were asking me to shoot jumpers or to finger roll!" Gilmore, a bit of an odd choice for the contest at 7 feet, 2 inches, remembers feeling uncertain, as well. "I went first and I was happy to be there," he said. "But I was a little conservative. Maybe I thought too much about not missing dunks." Gilmore added some flavor with a two-ball slam on his first effort and a reverse on his third, and he still takes pride in his clean, emphatic finishes that night. "I elevated as high as I possibly could and threw the ball down without touching the rim at all," he said. "I felt very comfortable with my dunks, but a seven-foot guy wasn't going to win that competition -- that competition was about David and Doc." True enough. Campbell and Rich opened the festivities, the actual game was a high-octane 144-138 affair, and Gilmore, Kenon and Gervin (who got off a sweet "coiled snake" on his second attempt) did their best -- as Gervin said, "to be as articulate as we could with our ideas and moves." But the night belonged to Skywalker and Doc and their dueling dunks. They were so much the show, in fact, that other players in the game didn't go into the locker room at halftime, preferring instead to stay courtside and watch what they'd come up with. "The guys were all there," Hundhausen said. "Some of them on the bench, some of them laying on the floor, and some of them sitting cross-legged near center court. It was crazy." These days the slam-dunk contest has its own night, but the original was the tasty meat in a single all-star sandwich. The concert began at 7:30 p.m. and the game came after. "They had to clear the floor, take the seats out and everything before they could start the game," Hundhausen remembers. "It was a long night before it even began." The game was no stroll-in-the-park exhibition either. The ABA style was fast-paced. "We pushed it," Gervin said. "We played open-floor. We ran. All the time." And with the unique Denver-versus-the-world format, this game was particularly competitive. "The Nuggets were like the Yankees or the Bulls or the Lakers in their heyday," Hundhausen said. "They were not well-liked. And besides, the team of all-stars did not want to get beat by a regular team." Both sides wanted to win from the jump. "You can see it on the tape," Ballantini said. "Gus Gerard is muscling Erving all night. And Doc is yelling at the refs, arguing for calls. It was intense." By the time the dunkers took the floor they were feeling a little gassed. "Really, none of us did much preparing," Erving said in "Loose Balls." "We all sort of winged it." They were jumping on game legs, still sweating from the action. "It was a long night," Thompson said. "Fun, but seriously long." That might explain why he missed his fourth dunk, a reverse slam on which he touches the ball to the box on the glass before bringing it home. It was a dunk he had done many times before. In fact, he chose it over a cradled hammer dunk (ball tucked in the left arm and then pounded home with the right fist) he did in warm-ups because he was sure he wouldn't miss it. "I was shocked," he said. "I just missed my timing on it. They didn't have the forgiving rim in those days, so if you weren't super clean you could miss pretty easily." If not for the miss, he probably would have won the contest, even with Dr. J's foul-line theatrics. "I was the hometown guy," he said. "The crowd was giving me a lot of support." Each of his other dunks was mighty impressive. He opened with a reverse from under the bucket, did a running two-handed jam next, and then broke out a jackknife reverse, from shoe tops to rim, on his third attempt. His last dunk was a baseline 360, coming from the left; Erving said it was the best dunk of the night. Thompson was just 6-4 and 195 pounds, but he routinely jumped over centers, in traffic, with all of Cartman's authority and then some. “When you throw one down, especially over a bigger man, you get a psychological advantage," he said. "When you can dunk on somebody, on somebody's head, those are the ones you like." There was a kind of fierceness about his dunks, a certain angry pop that fueled the 360 that night. But there was grace in his slams, too. You could see it in his feet, in the way he'd cross them at the ankles, as if he were casually putting them up on a coffee table, or sometimes flutter kick them like a synchronized swimmer rising up out of the blue. Doc had flair, and hair, but David had a unique combination of strength and flow all his own. He surprised you, but always with something that seemed somehow organic, somehow perfectly suited to his frame and the moment. The 360 was a virtuoso performance. It blew the crowd away. You actually can hear the gasp on the tape. "It was exciting to do something like that for the first time in front of a crowd," Thompson said. "They really got into it and we got into it too, and I think we all felt like we were part of something new that night, you know?" Spectacular as Thompson's last dunk was, folks were still waiting on the Doctor. "We all could dunk and frankly we weren't like the guys today who expect some kind of instant gratification about it; we didn't think it was that big a deal," Gilmore said. "But Julius was different. He was the ooh and aah guy. His dunks were adventures. His dunks made a difference." ABA coaches game-planned for Erving's dunks. Hubie Brown talks about giving his guys fines if they failed to foul Doc on a breakaway because the dunks could be such crowd-pleasing momentum changers. His first dunk in the contest was a reverse two-ball slam from a standing position. (Sorry, Artis.) His third was a reverse in which he held the rim with his right hand and dunked with his left, his fourth a big hook slam, and his fifth a fly-by deposit he called the "iron cross," with his right arm stretched way out from his torso and the rest of his body in a straight line toward the floor. Every one of them was tremendous. But the second dunk, the foul-line dunk, was THE dunk. And it wasn't just the dunk, it was the way he sold it. "He had such big hands and he had them dangling," Thompson said. "He was toying with the ball, toying with us, and he took those big steps, and he set it up good." He stepped-off the approach with half a dozen bounding strides, like Armstrong walking on the moon. As he made his way back to the spot the crowd's anticipation was a low, steady thrum, and by the time he was wheeling toward the bucket it was a collective gasp. "You have to have that audience sometimes to make you want something," Erving told me last year. "To make it possible for you to come up with something totally new." Let the record show he stepped on the line (thereby losing a $1,500 bet with Denver coach Doug Moe about whether he could in fact dunk from behind the stripe) when he took off. Further let the record show it didn't matter one bit. He rose up, he brought it down and the dunk positively killed. The crowd roared like a wave at the Eddie Aikau Memorial. Players on the sidelines jumped, danced, and fell all over each other like saved sisters at a tent revival. The whole room was goofy, high on the Doc. "Here was my philosophy -- dare to be great," Erving told the Houston Chronicle in 1996. "I just wanted to make a nice, soaring play that would get the fans out of their seats." Mission accomplished. Years later, people still come up to Thompson and say they were in Denver that night. "I must have had 50,000 people tell me they were at that game, and the arena only held about 17,000! Everybody wants to be part of the legend." It's hard now to imagine the impact that dunk (and the whole contest) had on the fans in the room, or on the whole of basketball culture back in '76. Maybe if you saw Elvis first swivel his hips for a roller rink full of bobby soxers you'd understand. If you were hanging with Pollock in the early action painting days you might get it. But we're so jaded now, so far gone from the moment, that we can't appreciate the way it struck people then, the way it literally knocked them out. "We've seen better dunks since then," Gervin said. "We've seen Michael be Michael and we've since seen Vince be Vince, and it will keep going, too, but David and Doc got something started that night with the 360 and the Free Throw; they showed us some amazing sights people had never seen before and they laid a foundation for everything we see now." A foundation, yes, and a paradigm shift, too. The contest had a small-time charm, from the casual gathering of players at courtside to the $1,200 in prizes handed out in paper envelopes immediately after it was over, but its acrobatic imagery went big-time. The game was broadcast in only four cities (Denver, New York, Indianapolis, and San Antonio) and it finished some time after 2 a.m. ET, but dunk contest highlights were featured on "The Today Show" and "Good Morning America" the next day, and in Sports Illustrated the following week. "There was an almost immediate buzz," Hundhausen said. "The ABA looked exciting and fresh and the NBA seemed boring by comparison." Merger plans had long been in the works between the ABA and the NBA, but the contest no doubt hastened them, and very likely expanded them (so that four teams instead of only two were adopted). The NBA had long looked down on the ABA. Despite the fact that the ABA had fared well in head-to-head exhibitions, Red Auerbach and others said the league lacked talent and its teams played no defense. David's spin and Doc's flight, because they became such public moments, and because the basketball-loving population was so energized by them, put a muzzle on the naysayers and legitimized the league, proving that its talent was every bit as good as, if not better than, the talent in the NBA. The dunks were a harbinger of things to come. "You only have to look at the roster of the ABA All-Star Game in 1976 and then the NBA All-Star Game in 1977," Hundhausen said. "Virtually all the ABA stars were NBA all-stars the next year, and three of the Nuggets made the NBA All-Star Game, too." (The 1977 NBA All-Star Game featured Thompson, Maurice Lucas, Don Buse, Bobby Jones, Dan Issel, Erving, George McGinnis, and Gervin.) But more than legitimizing ABA talent, the contest helped pave the way for ABA style to make its way onto NBA floors. "Even as it was falling apart the ABA came up with something so appealing and exciting that the NBA could not ignore it," Ballantini said. "Whether it had anything directly to do with the merger or not, you have to say it had a significant impact in what its players brought over in terms of flair and talent." "We played an exciting brand of basketball. Whether you're talking about the dunk, the 3-pointer, the way we passed and ran, or the fun we had," Gilmore puts it simply. Even as the league was crumbling, and just as the efficient, earthbound Celtics of Dave Cowens and John Havlicek were making their way toward an NBA title, the dunk contest heralded a new day; more expression and creativity, more excitement and flow, more of a fundamental willingness to go for it. "The ABA was a younger, hipper league, and the dunk contest highlighted our difference from the NBA brought some light to what we had and what we were doing in the ABA," Thompson said. It shook up the world, no doubt, but when you ask them about the contest now, some 30 years on, impact and legacy aren't the first things the guys recall. They tell you about Doc's afro, about David's height, and they tell you about the joy … the sensation. They look back through their mind's eye to a moment when what they could do and what the audience wanted to see were in perfect harmony. "We had a great feeling that night," Thompson said. "We were showing fans some things they'd never seen before. It was the start of something."

3) Skip Bayless, also of ESPN.com’s Page 2 reminds us of the car accident that is Bobby Knight:

Bobby Knight. Now I have your attention, don't I? Bobby Knight: profane bully, egomaniacal con artist, male chauvinist pig. Bobby Knight: biggest do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do hypocrite in coaching history. Me: unforgivably hypocritical for writing my 1,456th critical column about this insufferable jerk because -- I admit it -- I know you can't quit reading about him. Bobby Knight: most fascinating, most publicized and most recognizable coach ever. Not Lombardi. Not Auerbach. Not Stengel. Bob Knight, part madman and part showman. Bobby Knight. I admit it. I can't take my eyes off the guy because you never know what he might do or say. He drives me crazier than I often think he is because he has so many admirable and soooo many despicable qualities. Hollywood couldn't create a more riveting character because he mixes your emotions until they're a Molotov cocktail. He makes sure his players go to class and graduate. He will not cheat. He might be the greatest coach ever because he has done so much with so little talent. Since Isiah Thomas, who won Knight a national championship in 1981, Knight has recruited very few NBA-bound players. And that's because he, Bobby Knight, wants to be the star of his teams. He wants the attention and the credit. He wants to be rich and famous while demanding that his players sacrifice their egos for the team. While Knight nuts hail him as a combination John Wayne/George Patton, I consider him one of the most damaging role models ever. Knight, a maker of men? Of screwed-up men. Bobby Knight: heroic villain, villainous hero -- and the only coach in history who people will buy tickets to watch. Think about this: ESPN commissioned a movie about Knight, starring Brian Dennehy, while Knight is still coaching. And I watched it! Beginning Sunday night, ESPN will air a reality show called "Knight School" in which walk-ons compete for a spot on his team. And I'll watch! What a sucker I am. Just think: The coach at Texas Tech, whose team is 13-12, has his own reality show. Not Mike Krzyzewski or Roy Williams. Not Larry Brown or Pat Riley, Cowher or Holmgren, Paterno or Bowden, Torre or La Russa. Bobby Knight, the Mike Tyson of coaches. What might he do next? Give some poor walk-on such a heavily bleeped tongue-lashing that he flees the court in tears? Grab some kid by the throat until he passes out? Knight appeared Tuesday on my show, ESPN2's "Cold Pizza," to promote his show. Dana Jacobson interviewed him. When she asked if he thinks about retirement, he said, "At one point, do you think about not fixing breakfast?" Dana says she didn't interpret the response as even a subtly sexist shot. She believes he was saying that, for him, coaching is as much a part of life as fixing breakfast. But I've observed Knight for so long that I'm pretty sure this was his way of putting a gutsy female interviewer in her place, suggesting that, really, all she's good for is fixing breakfast. No other coach could get away with what Knight regularly does. Finally, Dana tried asking about the Mike Davis situation at Indiana. When Knight cut her off with, "I'm not talking about Indiana," she attempted to explain how this was a legitimate question because his successor was talking about walking away. And Knight said, "That's it, dear," yanked out his earpiece and stormed off camera. Go fix breakfast, dear. For Knight -- who has thrown everything from chairs, to a rival fan into a garbage can, to a punch at a cop in Puerto Rico -- this blowup was the equivalent of saying "darn it." But by Tuesday afternoon, you would have thought Bobby Knight had socked Dana Jacobson in the jaw. Talk shows across the country were requesting interviews with Dana. "Around the Horn" and "Pardon the Interruption" debated the incident. I did a previously scheduled ESPN.com chat session between 3:30 and 4:30 p.m. ET, and as soon as I answered one question about Bobby vs. Dana, my chat room was knee-deep in demands of "TELL US MORE!" And I'm thinking: Did Knight stage this? Did he know the best way to promote his show was to try to humiliate a female interviewer? Where does the madman stop and the showman start? If you like, you can suspect that "Cold Pizza's" producers collaborated with Knight to choreograph his angry exit, but you'll be dead wrong. That was all Knight, the greatest product-pushing self-promoter in coaching history. Did I mention that yet another book is coming out on Knight? That's right, another book about a coach who hasn't been to a Final Four since 1992. It's called "Bob Knight ... the Unauthorized Biography," and its authors are two excellent writer-reporters, Mark Heisler and Steve Delsohn. One of the book's most enlightening nuggets: Knight, a hotshot scorer in high school, signed with Ohio State as part of one of the greatest recruiting classes ever. Knight couldn't crack the starting lineup for four years. Knight made some bitter remarks -- and his mother caused a scene -- at the team banquet after his senior season. Bobby Knight: frustrated star still driven to become far better-known than any of his college teammates -- Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Larry Siegfried -- who starred in the NBA. On Thursday, Knight's shadow cast a pall over Mike Davis' resignation at Indiana. Davis spoke with what sounded like mock sincerity about how this was a great day for Indiana because after six years, the "healing process of coach Knight not being here" should come to a close and IU fans should be "reunited." Translation: Davis finally decided he would never win over the Knight nuts. Though Davis had been Knight's blindly loyal assistant, Knight wouldn't endorse him as a replacement and didn't call to congratulate him when he got the job. Knight doesn't want Davis -- or anyone else -- to succeed at Indiana. So forget replacing Davis with Iowa coach Steve Alford, who helped Knight win his last national title. Most IU fans won't be happy until Knight himself returns. They long for the daily soap opera they grew addicted to, "The Edge of Knight." Knight made even losing interesting. I can't quit writing about him. And you can't quit reading.