It's Time To Re-Hype Ourselves for the NBA's All-Star Weekend

Last year's All-Star weekend was such a travesty for the NBA that I completely abandoned the idea of a blog post with the sole focus of this 3-day event. As it turns out, I made the right decision since it was filled with confusion and an underwhelmed audience. The Dunk Contest had a team winner instead of the annual individual winner (John Wall was voted Dunker of the Night but, there was only one trophy for his 3-man team), the Shooting Stars Challenge was quicker with less racks to shoot from and the Skills Competition had four pairings instead of the typical four players dribbling up and down the court. All things considered, the night was a failure of epic proportions and we as NBA fans had no clear person to blame with David Stern on the way out and Adam Silver on the way in as commissioner.

Thankfully, the NBA has gotten the wake-up call they needed after last year's harsh reaction to the woeful 2014 All-Star Weekend festivities and they really stepped up their game with some big names and some future big names participating in Saturday night's events that you should be getting pretty hyped about. They also re-structured the layout of the dunk contest back to it's two-round format.

Rising Stars Challenge
Format change! It's USA v. World in the annual Rookie-Sophomore game and this should be a fun game to get everyone excited about the league's future.

I'm definitely picking the International team for victory but how might these lineups look? Let me take a guess...

USA
Aaron Gordon
Marcus Smart
Elfrid Payton
Doug McDermott
Zach LaVine
K.J. McDaniels
Victor Oladipo
Nerlens Noel
Michael Carter-Williams
Shabazz Muhammad
Mason Plumlee
Tim Hardaway Jr.

International
Andrew Wiggins
Dante Exum
Nik Stauskas
Jusuf Nurkic'
Anthony Bennett
Alex Len
Steven Adams
Kelly Olynyk
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Dennis Schroder
Gorgui Dieng
Rudy Gobert

Note: The event hasn't had twelve-man rosters in the past so, imagine some of these names (1-3) will be cut from the lineup.

Shooting Stars Challenge

Photo Credit: Jesse D. Garrabrant
Can Dominique Wilkins, Chris Bosh and Swin Cash pull off the first ever three-peat?

Although the NBA has yet to confirm any names or cities represented in this competition, I'm picking Team New York (if they're going back to the city/team format) because you bet they'll want this more than any other team considering where the weekend is located (New York) and with how much of hot mess the Knicks have been all year, it'd be nice to take away ANYTHING from the 2014-15 NBA Season other than a lottery pick.

Skills Competition

Kyrie is my pick even if he hasn't put his name in yet

We don't even know the format, let alone any participants, but my metaphorical money is on Kyrie Irving. He always shows up for All-Star Weekend.

3-Point Shootout

In a lineup where Wesley Matthews is the worst shooter, that's a damn good lineup.

The Participants: Kyle Korver, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, J.J. Redick, Wesley Matthews, one unknown (according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports).

My guess is that the unknown participant is definitely Marco Belinelli if he is healthy enough to go. If not, I expect Ray Allen to come out of the stands and audition for the Cavaliers. This is easily the best 3-point lineup the NBA has had since the original Larry Bird years. Curry & Thompson are tearing up the league nightly and are must-watch material every time they touch a basketball. Kyle Korver is right on the verge of being an All-Star for the first time in his career because, nobody fills the long-distance-shooter-and-nothing-else role quite as efficiently as Korver has this season. Redick and Matthews are tremendous shooters as well with Redick being a cult-legend at Duke for his shooting sessions in practice.

My pick: Korver.

Slam Dunk Contest

David Manning-USA TODAY Sports
Magic 2nd-year pro Victor Oladipo should put on quite a show win or lose.

The Participants: Victor Oladipo, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Zach LaVine, Mason Plumlee

Thank god we don't have to deal with the mess that was last year's competition again. Granted, the names could be better as there aren't any current All-Stars participating but, we have some very intriguing, so-far so-good talent in the contest. Andrew Wiggins was rumored to be participating but, I'd take Oladipo, the Greek Freak, LaVine's vertical, and a Plumlee borther over anything this contest had from 2011-2013. I think the contest will win us back a little bit with (hopefully) more props. PS: If you're an anti-prop person, just get away from anything All-Star related because you are a person who does not appreciate fun and the fact that the target audience for events like this are the kids. Also, I find people who are anti-props in the Dunk Contest to be the Pete Prisco's of the NBA. What do I mean by that? Pete Prisco is an NFL analyst for CBS who is strictly all about the prototypical pocket-passer. He would rather have Andy Dalton than Russell Wilson despite Wilson's two Super Bowl appearances and is quite frankly, a doofus.

My pick: LaVine.

The Actual All-Star Game
The All-Star Game isn't super competitive anymore but, it gives fans a chance to see the best players in the league play together and get the Twitterverse all excited about possibly recruiting each other behind closed doors. The game is filled with some of the smoothest in-game play you'll ever see with flawless, effortless alley-oops and players like Kyrie Irving crossing over some of the league's best.

Here are this year's Starting Lineups

East - John Wall, Kyle Lowry, Lebron James, Pau Gasol, Carmelo Anthony
West - Stephen Curry, Kobe Bryant (to be replaced due to season-ending injury), Anthony Davis, Marc Gasol, Blake Griffin

I agree with 7/10 picks for the starting lineups and that's better than most years. I would have personally liked to see James Harden over Kobe and both Blake and Melo could have sat on the bench but, it's an All-Star Game, nothing important.

Here are my choices for the benches to be revealed at 7 PM ET on TNT...

East - Jeff Teague, Paul Millsap, Al Horford, Chris Bosh, Jimmy Butler, Kyle Korver, Nikola Vucevic'
West - Klay Thompson (will replace Kobe in lineup because the team is coached by Steve Kerr), James Harden, Dwight Howard, LaMarcus Aldridge, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, DeMarcus Cousins, Damian Lillard (Going with five Guards? Steve Kerr can make it work!)

These aren't "predictions", these are my personal preferences on who deserves to be an All-Star this season.

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports 
It's unlikely that Nikola Vucevic' actually makes the Eastern Conference's roster but, there are very few deserving players in the East. 

So, enjoy the All-Star festivities coming up from February 15th through February 17th and remember, don't get too excited for the Dunk Contest but, don't be a cynic throughout the whole process and things will go much better.