SHAQ AND KOBE TURN BACK CLOCK

 

(Image taken from NBA.com)

 

Well, it's hear again. The NBA Allstar Game. Best in the East play the best in the West. The one game in the entire season when it truly is a case of "it's not the winning, it's the taking part that counts". This time around, the extravanganza was in Phoenix, the local Suns having two represenatives on the West team despie not being in a stable state. Shaq decided to do a spot of dancing before his entrance, everyone wound up doing community work in the Arizona capital, any celeb that could call themselves a basketball fan was there and the occasional lucky kid made his way into the dressing room. It's the ultimate busman's holiday for the NBA player, it was time for them to show us what they got.

Well to start with the West had absolutely nothing, they couldn't buy a bucket for over a minute and even after that, West points were few and far between, the East lead hit double digits less than five minutes in and after that, well it was the crazy mix of insane tricks and dumber than usual misses. The East were up 20-8 at the half way point. Then finally the West put on a surge, enough to show the East that there was more than one set of players on court. In fact though a 19-0 run left them able to turn the game around and then it was the East who hasd to come up with something again. And they couldn't before the buzzer, Kobe picked up 11 points, West led 34-27 at the end of one.

Just over a minute into the second quarter, and the West lead hit double digits, and it was all the East could do to hold back the tide. That managed to put up a pretty good counter-surge but nothing that could turn the game round entirely, still they did manage to cut the deficit to one, on multiple occasions. And still the West came back, the game starting to get a bit more serious now, though the quality of the players, helped by "soft rims" was still obvious. Less than four minutes on the clock, the East tied the game at 58. And yet if you have a guy like Phil Jackson behind the scenes, you know you're not going to go far wrong. Kobe was on 13 for the West, local hero Amare Stoudemire was backing him up with 10 points. West up 72-67 at the half.

The East again kept it tight in the third, cutting the deficit down to four but again the West got it back up to double figures and a rock solid defence for the West team(a rarity in the Allstar Game) combined the Western stars showing us all their tricks on the other end. Dunks, insane passes, all check and all coming from only one team. The crazy misses were coming from those in East shirts and though the game traditionally gets serious in the 4th quarter, it looked to be over at the end of three. Kobe led the way with 23 points. Shaq showed people that he could still do the business with 17 points. West led 110-91 and the East had their work cut out.

Well, credit to the East, they tried to take it seriously, and got the deficit down to fifteen early on. However it wasn't long after that that the East just gave up on trying to win the game and it effectively turned into a slam dunk contest for a while. And then it became a West demo once again as their lead hit 20 with just over five minutes remaining. The East then got back to business to an extent but the West were still by far the better team. The last move of the game was a LeBron dunk with no one bothering to offer any resistance. But the main heroes of the day were all from the West, Kobe got 27 points, Stoudemire 19, Shaq 17, Chris Paul, Pau Gasol and Tony Parker 14 each. West won 146-119 for their first AllStar win since '07.

The MVP of that '07 game was Kobe Bryant. And he used to have this teammate at the Lakers called Shaquille O'Neal, and then the Lakers gave him away to the Heat in the summer of '04 and it took until last season for the Lakers to look like recovering. Well Shaq's now with the Suns and I have to admit, even I had written him off. He didn't even play in last year's Allstar and wasn't picked as a starter this time round. Pair him up with Kobe and his old Lakers coach Phil Jackson and what do you get? Him and Kobe picking up joint Allstar MVPs, the third for each of them. Given that I was one of those that had written Shaq off, it was certainly good to see him back on form.

As for the other events at Allstar weekend, The East Sunrisers(coached by Julius Erving) beat the West Sunsetters (coached by Magic Johnson) 60-57 in the Celebrity game. The Sophomores beeat the Rookies 122-116 in the Rookie Challenge. Detroit won the Shooting Stars challenge(where a three person team made up of a current NBA player, a current WNBA player and an NBA legend have to make a series of six shots against the clock). The Bulls' Derrick Rose won the Skills challenge. The Heat's Daequan Cook won the Three point shootout and the Knicks Nate Robinson managed to win the Slam Dunk contest by dunking over reigning champ Dwight Howard!

Click here to visit the Basketball archive

Comments go here

Click here to return to sports homepage

Click here to return to Matt G's homepage