Michael Jordan is a judge

Is there something wrong with the Dunk Contest when the most exciting thing about it is that Michael Jordan will be sitting there watching?

As you know if you’ve been around for about a year, we’ve long ago lost any infatuation with All-Star Saturday Night’s slammy competition. We much favor our own creation, the All-Star One-on-One Tournament, the full explanation of you can read about here.

(Once again, were this installed as an annual event by the NBA, it may well outdraw the game itself in the ratings. We believe this is our true contribution NBA history which a space-time glitch has somehow eliminated from being executed.)

So yeah, MJ is going to be a judge of this year’s thingie, along with Nique, Vince Carter, and Kobe, all former champs. Some thoughts:

1) Isn’t MJ above this? We always find the judges a little sad sitting over there, with their stupid cards, throwing out 50s any time anyone can make a dunk on their first try. Especially last year, when they’d change which stupid card they held up based on what the other ones had up.

2) Will Kobe peek at MJ’s stupid card and then always make his stupid card one higher? (Stupid cards aside, for all the comparisons between them, we’ve never really seen them interact much since 1997, so hopefully they just keep one cam running on the judges table. This would be far more interesting to us than the contest.)

3) Will Vince like push his stupid card to the front of the table and lean it up on something, because holding the stupid card above his head takes too much effort?

4) We get the feeling Nique would sell his stupid cards on Ebay if he had the chance.

5) Didn’t Nate Robinson’s sad display kinda make this a bigger joke than it already was? (They’ve installed new rules this year to avoid the Official Nate Robinson I’ma Try This 18 Times and Then Act Like A Badass Even Though Everyone Is Now Laughing At Me thing.

6) This type of judge lineup should only be rolled out if you’ve got actual stars participating. Tyrus Thomas, Dwight Howard (Okay, he counts, but he’s tall.), Gerald Green’s nine fingers, and Nate again. Bleh.

7) Besides, while Vince’s performance was a revelation and tricked everyone into thinking the contest wasn’t dead, Kobe’s was significant only because he was so young and new. His dunks really weren’t anything special. Does he really deserve to be on this panel of legendary dunkers and stupid card holder-uppers?

As usual, the best part of All-Star Saturday Night will be the 3-point Shootout, which so far has Damon Jones and Gilbert Arenas confirmed. Those two alone guarantee entertainment of some kind, although we wouldn’t rule out Gil pulling a Nate and insisting on shooting beyond his alotted time until he makes 146 straight shots for some reason only he can understand.

Afterward, he will claim innocently that he’s only trying to “be entertaining”. Of course, while that’s going on, Damon Jones will be making his entrance, in which he rides in with a parade of motorcycles and elephants.