The NBA All-Star-Slam-Dunk Game

The NBA All-Star game was played last night and the West managed to hold off a late surge by the East. The final score was 152-149, so you can clearly see that defense was not a top priority. Kobe Bryant managed to pass Michael Jordan for most All-Star game points; Kobe now has a total of 271 points. Kevin Durant won the MVP award with 36 points, which was just six points away from the All-Star game record.

But, who cares about all of that? Not me. The All-Star game is strictly there for entertainment purposes and you know it was pretty dang entertaining. Why was it entertaining? Was it because they played their hardest throughout the whole game and really battled it out? No. It was entertaining because of all the dunks! The All-Star game had better dunks in it than the actual Slam Dunk contest that took place the night before.

Why is that? Well, it’s because the top dogs who were playing in the All-Star game refuse to participate in the Slam Dunk contest. A lot of people say it’s because there is no incentive to compete in it. People say there needs to be a big cash prize for it, like a million dollars.

To me, that just sounds ridiculous. LeBron doesn’t need an extra million dollars, he can afford to take an hour out of his weekend to participate in the Slam Dunk contest. All-Star weekend is all about the fans! Players should want to do everything possible to entertain the fans. LeBron doesn’t want to be in the Slam Dunk contest because it needs an update!

The format is played out, the dunks are played out and the props are played out. However, we saw last night that dunks still can be really exciting. They were exciting because they were during a game, it was fast paced. Players were running up and down the court, alley-oop after alley-oop, it was truly exciting to watch.

That is what the Slam Dunk contest needs! They need to update it and change the format. West vs. East. You pick three players from the East and three from the West. They play against each other in a 10 minute quarter and only dunks will count as points, an alley-oop will count as a three pointer. At the end of the game, the public will vote on which team had the best dunks and they will get 10 points added to their final score.  The team that wins gets to donate $250,000 to the charity of their choice.

Problem solved.