NBA All-Star Saturday: Kevin Love Wins Three-Point Contest, Allan Houston Is A Shooting Star

Jones will attempt to win back-to-back titles, but Durant looks like a legit challenge at this point.

The dunk contest will follow the shootout. For all your 2012 Slam Dunk Contest needs, be sure to visit this StoryStream.

Everything about this GIF is great. The slick handshake celebration is one thing, but Serge Ibaka’s attire wins everything. He’s rocking a Thriller jacket for the All-Star Game festivities, showing up everyone else in attendance.

Just perfect.

Morrow had planned on donning the jersey the entire time, and despite falling short in the competition, he certainly made anyone watching from the Petrovic family proud. Here’s what he said earlier on Sunday.

For more on Morrow and the Nets, visit Nets Daily and SB Nation New York. For all your 2012 Slam Dunk Contest needs, be sure to visit this StoryStream.

The Skills Competition is more of a half-speed dribbling and passing competition for the NBA’s finest point guards, leading the SB Nation newsroom to pine for JaVale McGee’s inclusion. Wouldn’t the Skills Competition be about 100 times better than the current setup with big men running the floor and McGee just being McGee? Of course it would.

Apparently John Wall thinks so, too. Perhaps he was upset McGee wasn’t asked to be included in the dunk contest. Perhaps he’s on board with McGee as a Skills Competition participant. Or maybe this competition doesn’t mean much at all! Whatever the case, he paid tribute to the Wizards’ dunker who has a propensity to toss the ball off the backboard with this gem:

The competition involved teammates alternating shots from different spots on the floor and ended with the players attempting halfcourt shots until one of them made it.

We all remember TNT’s Christmas Day promo for the return of the NBA. Following the lockout, everyone was hungry for professional basketball, and TNT ushered in the day with a terrific pre-game promo that had to go down as one of the all-time greats. And now, on All-Star Saturday, they’re at it again with another excellent promo.

This time around, the two-minute spot was cut for the dunk contest. It features classic dunk moments in somewhat of a music video format, with Kanye West and Jay-Z singing “Ni***s in Paris” over the highlights. Once again the production value is through the roof and TNT set the stage for the events of the evening in a great way.

We already know Spike Lee has full-on Linsanity, but this is something else.

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It’s hard to imagine an NBA without David Stern as commissioner. But even warlocks can’t live forever. At some point, Stern will amble off into fandom and Law and Order marathons, and the league we love will have a gaping hole at the head of the boardroom.

Luckily, Adam Silver has a large head that can fill most of that gaping hole. During his “State of the League” press conference on Saturday, Stern said that when he does eventually retire as commissioner, he will recommend that owners choose Silver, the deputy, as his replacement.

The comment and compliments paid to Silver by the often snarky and contemptuous Stern made the deputy blush. Silver doesn’t necessarily have the presence of Stern -- who does? -- but he speaks with a certain directness and obviously understands the business of the NBA intimately well, having served under Stern for so long.

NBA All-Star Weekend has arrived in Orlando. The 2012 edition of the annual exhibition includes skills challenges, such as the Haier Shooting Stars event, the Taco Bell Skills Contest and the Foot Locker Three-Point Contest. Not to be forgotten, of course, is one of the most popular events every year, the Slam Dunk Contest.

Coverage of all four events begins 8 p.m. ET on TNT. The Sprite Slam Dunk Contest is scheduled to be the final event of the night.

The West team defeated the East squad 135-132 Saturday in the NBDL All-Star Game.

For more on the D-League, head on over to Ridiculous Upside. For more on the NBDL All-Star Game and the rest of the 2012 NBA All-Star Game festivities, stay with this SB Nation stream.

The contest dates back to the 1976 ABA All-Star Game, where Julius Erving claimed the inaugural title. The contest was reintroduced by the NBA in 1984, when Larry Nance bested Erving to take home the trophy.

The Sprite Slam Dunk Contest will be the final event held during All-Star Saturday Night festivities, which begin 8 p.m. ET on TNT.

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↵Via the great @jose3030.

Unless ...

I like that sound of that.

There are a few things that are okay about the Haier Shooting Stars event at the NBA All-Star Saturday proceedings. It’s good that WNBA players get a chance to go on national television alongside NBA players. It’s always fun to watch anyone chuck up halfcourt shots. And ... that is the list of the things that are good about Shooting Stars.

Until everyone starts heaving up halfcourt shots, it’s a pretty dumb event. Even then, it’s only fun if someone nails it on the first try or if we get to watch professional athletes struggle valiantly against the forces of nature, failing to get the ball into the hoop for three minutes.

Players are timed in an obstacle course where they dribble around cones, pass the ball at a trampoline and generally look ridiculous.

NBA.com informs us that Curry won last year’s event with a time of 28.2 seconds, which is apparently an impressive time, as it was the only sub-30 second score of the night.

Jones is in his ninth season in the NBA and fourth with the Heat. He’s a 40 percent three-point shooter during his career and 42 percent this season. Despite winning the contest last year, he’s third on the Heat in three-point shooting percentage.

Kevin Durant isn’t known for his three-point shooting ability but he can hold his own, averaging 37 percent this season and 36 percent over his career. This will be Durant’s third-consecutive year as an NBA All-Star.

However it’s his dunks that make him stand out and are a major reason why he’s taking part in the Sprite Slam Dunk Competition this year.

Here’s some visual proof for you:

While Budinger might not come to mind when you think of great dunkers in the NBA, let this video show you he belongs:

Budinger might want to use the baseline in the contest, especially if he’s going to try and attempt a dunk like this one again:

The second overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft has amassed an impressive highlight reel during his first season in the NBA, and he’d like the opportunity to show his skills to the rest of the world. The 2011 Pac-10 Player of the Year is looking to grow his legacy, something that winning the dunk contest can facilitate.

The second-year pro is averaging less than six minutes per game this season, but he has become a fan favorite in his limited playing time primarily because he isn’t afraid of absolutely yamming on any defender the opposing team puts in front of him.

It probably makes sense to just get out of the way when Evans is in the game -- or at least the painted area surrounding the basket. If those couple of dunks aren’t enough to make one think that’s a wise choice, consider the following mix.

The NBA All-Star Game is fun, but depending on those scheduled to appear, All-Star Saturday can get just as much publicity. This is probably not one of those years, as the dunk contest lacks star power, but the young players selected have some serious talent.

The day kicks off with some afternoon events, including All-Star practice and the D-League All-Star game, before David Stern has a press conference.

There are quite a few events going on in Orlando during the annual NBA All-Star Weekend, If everything goes as planned, the majority of the happenings probably won’t be terribly exciting. The 2012 D-League All-Star game is one of those events, but it’s still worth tuning in for a couple of reasons.

If one happens to tune into NBA TV on Saturday afternoon to catch the All-Star game itself, however, be prepared to be confused. In conjunction with the sponsor 26 Seconds, the shot clock will be -- you guessed it -- 26 seconds “in order to drive awareness to the fact that a student drops out of high school every 26 seconds in America.”

Right after my junior year of high school, smack in the middle of the college recruiting process (not to mention the “grow legitimate armpit hair” process), I traveled to Teaneck, New Jersey, to participate in what was at that time called the Adidas ABCD Camp. Basically, ABCD was the premiere showcase in the nation for high school basketball players, an invite-only camp featuring some of the country’s best prospects, including a slew of current NBA stars like LeBron and Carmelo. Every college coach in the country was there, all the big media outlets covered it, and it was without a doubt one of the marquee high school basketball events of the summer, especially for guys like me who were still trying to lock down that scholarship from whatever school was on the top of our lists.

In my case, that school was Stanford University, the place I’d wanted to go ever since I passed through campus in seventh grade on a trip to visit my grandma. They were already recruiting me when ABCD rolled around, and while we had some good chemistry working, it hadn’t gotten hot-and-heavy yet. Sure, Stanford and I had reached the adolescent equivalent of holding hands at the movies and ordering one milkshake with two straws at the local burger joint, just so all of our friends could witness our adorable canoodling, but still, I wanted more. At the very least, I wanted some over-the-shirt action at the bonfire next weekend, but only if Stanford was into it, and at the very most (and to end this analogy before things get awkward between me and Stanford), I wanted that scholarship. I knew deep down that Palo Alto was the right place for me to go to school, and ABCD was my chance to get there.