Brook Lopez

The western conference All-Stars defeated the eastern conference All-Stars 143-138 in Sunday night’s All-Star game in Houston, Texas. The East was led by Carmelo Anthony of Manhattan, who scored 26 points. Lebron James and Dwyane Wade combined to score 40. Paul George had 17 points off the bench. For the West, Kevin Durant led the team in scoring with 30 points and Blake Griffin also had 19. However, Chris Paul was the MVP of this game, scoring 20 points to go along with 15 assists.

The West was clearly the better team tonight, although this game means very little. Lebron James and Kobe Bryant were both a little disappointing. Kobe only scored 9 points, but he also had 8 assists. James Harden, who was playing at home in Houston, scored 15 points off the bench for the West.

Representing the Brooklyn Nets in the game was Brook Lopez. Lopez played the second-fewest minutes of anybody in the east, ahead of only Kevin Garnett who only played in the first quarter. In 11 minutes, Lopez scored 3 points on 3-4 shooting from the foul line. Lopez’s only field goal attempt was a missed 3. Along with his 3 points, Lopez also had 5 rebounds and 3 assists. It would have been nice to see Lopez hit a field goal, but as a Nets fan, I am more happy that he did not get injured than anything else. Although I would have liked to see Brook play a little bit more than 11 minutes, it is enough of an honor for him to just be playing in this game.

Terrence Ross

Terrence Ross of the Toronto Raptors won the Slam Dunk Contest in Houston as the finale of all-star Saturday night. Ross defeated Jeremy Evans of the Utah Jazz in the championship round of the competition. In Ross’s second to last dunk, he wore a 2000 Vince Carter Raptors jersey, which was pretty cool. In his last dunk, Evans jumped over one of the ball boys. Other participants in the competition were Gerald Green, James White, Eric Bledsoe, and Kenneth Faried.

Although Ross had some good dunks, this is a dying competition and many of the dunks were very average. In fact, the only dunkers I wasn’t disappointed by were Ross and former Net Gerald Green, now of the Pacers. He could have advanced to the finals, but he was not able to complete a very difficult dunk in the second round of the competition. James White of the Knicks, who had a lot of hype heading into this competition, was not impressive at all. Not to brag, but I did pick Ross to win this competition.

Ross is a rookie for Toronto and was a lottery pick in last year’s draft. Although he has had some good moments this season, he hasn’t gotten much playing time. That may change after this competition because his popularity in Toronto surely has grown.