Shooting stars? Guards shoot, big men dunk. That's the formula, right? Well, Saturday Night's Shooting Stars Competition gave us all a little lesson in New Math and - as Reggie Miller put it - set back shooting 100 years. Team Detroit (Chauncy Billups, WNBA Player X, Bill Laimbeer) were the defending champs, but they got ousted in the first round, and the finals pitted guard-heavy Team Chicago (Chris Duhon, WNBA Player Y, B.J. Armstrong) against center-laden Team San Antonio (Tim Duncan, WNBA Player Z, David Robinson). So naturally the team with two seven-footers won the thing, thanks to a top-of-the-key three from Duncan and a half court shot from The Admiral, who looks better in retirement than most guys look while playing. Seeing my man David made watching this travesty of shooting a little less painful.

They've got skills. Well, some of them: The Skills Challenge turned into a somewhat exciting battle of one-upsmanship between two emerging superstar point guards, with Deron Williams setting a new even record (25.5 seconds) to upset Chris Paul in the finals. However, Jason Kidd and Dwyane Wade just embarrassed themselves. Kidd's woeful lack of shooting touch was on display when he clunked all five three-point attempts and got tossed after round one with a time of 39.7 seconds. Wade, though...Wade had a full-on ego-ectomy. After electing not to even practice the course, the two-time defending Skills Competition champion lost his dribble out of bounds, botched four straight jumpers before just giving up and flinging the fifth at the hoop, and then missed two layups before ending the round with a score of 53.9 seconds...a time even Stephen Hawking could have beaten.

Steve Nash has no rhythm: Nash admitted before the Three-Point Shootout that the only reason he was taking part in the event was because the Collective Bargaining Agreement says he has to. (Said Nash: "They hold me to it every year.") So naturally he went out and performed like a man who didn't care and wanted it to all be over as quickly as possible, hitting only eight of 25 shots and scoring a lowly nine points. Maybe that'll teach David Stern not to force unwilling former MVPs to compete in meaningless contests they couldn't care less about.

The dunk contest requires dunks, right? Okay, let me open by saying that I have a serious case of the man love for Dwight Howard, and I freaked out when he pulled out the Superman cape for his first dunk. But...he didn't dunk that ball, he just sort of threw it in. Of course, everybody was so juiced about the cape - even David Stern was standing and yelling - that nobody seemed to notice that Howard failed to slam it home. I was also a little bummed that the Superman routine and Gerald Green's cupcake dunk got used up in the first round, because everything after that felt a little anticlimactic.

Gerald Green lost his invitation to planet Lovetron: I can't believe I forgot about this one. Thanks to flohtingpoint for the reminder: "While all of this was great stuff, nothing, and I mean NOTHING, came close to Gerald Green taking off his shoes, signing them for Darryl Dawkins, then having Chocolate Thunder bat them off the table when Gerald basically performed the same dunk twice in a row." You know, while I was watching that dunk, I thought: You know, doing a running dunk in socks would be pretty difficult. Unfortunately for Green, the dunk may indeed have been difficult, but it just looked stupid.

The Bibby Trade: So...Mike Bibby finally gets traded...to the Hawks?! Excuse me for totally not caring. I guess it improves the Hawks and all, but it's probably only the difference between not making the playoffs and first-round sweep. I was really hoping the Bibster would end up in Cleveland. And so was LeBron James.

The All-Star Game script remains unchanged: This is the way almost every All-Star Game seems to go: Ridiculously sloppy first quarter, followed by one team running up a big lead in the second quarter, followed by the other team staging a rally in the third quarter, followed by a fairly competitive fourth quarter (except for the occasional blowout). And this year's game followed that time-tested script to a T.

Three-point shooting: There were a lot of airballs last night despite the fact that no one was playing any defense until the fourth quarter.

Freethrow shooting: I understand that it's just the All-Star game and the level of focus and concentration maybe isn't as high as usual. But the FT shooting numbers were a Shaq-like 57 percent (8-for-14) for the West and a Chris Dudley-like 42 percent (6-for-14) for the East.

Yao Ming: Not only did the big man attempt a couple threes - the second of which was a step-back airball after the game had started to get serious - he was posterized at least two or three times by Howard. Maybe it's just me, but Yao always looks like he's moving in slow motion, especially when he's surrounded by All-Stars.

Kobe Bryant: He played only 2:52 in the first quarter and then sat out the remainder of the game to rest his pinkie finger. And yes, those are some of the lamest words ever strung together in the English language. My real disappointment, though, was the fact that he couldn't take part in the Three-Point Shootout, because then at least there would have been one score lower than Steve's.

Allen Iverson: The Answer scored only 7 points (3-for-7) and committed 6 turnovers. I wouldn't have even bothered to mention him, except that he apparently jumped everybody's case during halftime about taking the game seriously and playing to win. Come on, A.I., we're talking about All-Star Games!

Tim Duncan: Does this man ever smile? TD didn't crack one after the Shooting Stars Competition, and his face didn't so much as move during the ASG intros, despite the fact that his fellow starters were hamming it up for the camera. Okay, fine, Tim. We all get that you don't want to be there. But you don't have to act like your puppy just died, okay?

Dirk Nowitzki: It was a rough night for the reigning regular season MVP. He airballed a three, shot 5-for-14, got posterized by LeBron, and then got his junk stuffed by Dwyane Wade.

Chris Paul: I have nothing bad to say about this kid. He was huge (16 points, 14 assists) and probably would have won the MVP if his team could have pulled it out. Which would have rocked the house, since he was playing at home.

Rasheed Wallace: The one man who wanted to be at the All-Star Game less than Tim Duncan. He might have been dancing a little jig during the intros, but the expression on his face said, "I'm about to choke a bitch." 'Sheed then went out and hoisted out three or four left-handed threes, only, just like Inigo Montoya, he's not left-handed.

Chauncy Billups: I cringe every time somebody calls him Mr. Big Shot. Last night's line: 3-for-10 from the field, 0-for-6 from three. Can't we just call him Mr. Occasionally Hits A Tough Shot?

Jason Kidd: It was awkward to watch him in a New Jersey Nets uniform during the Skills Competition, and it was even more awkward to listen to trade updates throughout the All-Star game...including when David Aldridge tried to bug Dirk about it, and Dirk was afraid to even comment on it.

LeBron James: He had a great night put up some big-time numbers - 27 points, 8 rebounds, 9 assists - but he didn't deserve the MVP award. Ray Allen did. And you could kind of see it in LeBron's face when he was accepting the trophy from David Stern. But he cut through the Western Conference All-Stars like a knife through butter and crammed one down into Nowitzki's face, which immediately became the signature play of the game. And that's what the fans were thinking about while casting their MVP votes, I'm sure.

Labels: All-Star Game, Chauncy Billups, Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Rasheed Wallace Rule, Steve Nash, Tim Duncan