All Star

Regardless of the shortcomings, better spending, socializing and entertainment in the basketball world, these three days in February are simply gone.


The NBA All Star Weekend is with the Super Bowl the most organized sporting event you can visit. Paradise for sports journalists who follow basketball. Everything is at your fingertips. The best basketball players in the world, concerts, parties organized by some of the thousands of rappers who visit the city in which they play. There are NBA legends, coaches, wives, mothers, lovers, actors, actresses, models, singers, escorts of 30 "friends from childhood" with strangely bloody eyes, sponsored, whatever you can imagine ...

Today, on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, editorial staff very rarely sends journalists to convey some great sporting events from the scene. As far as America is concerned, the editor immediately sheds its eyes and emphasizes the ineffectiveness of such a trip, and the low view of the games that are broadcast after midnight (I'm doing a 10 year commentary, I know at least a few thousand people and I still have not met anyone who has a "piplmetar" a device that measures the viewing of programs in their household. In general, the measurement of ratings in our country is a very stretching term).

The NBA league is, in my opinion, the most organized league in the world in any sport. Let's take the Champions League as a comparison. Since two seasons, in the Champions League, you can only receive TV accreditation if your house broadcasts this competition by requiring that the given match must acquire a commentary position and to receive a maximum of two accreditations. Written media outside countries whose clubs play the game generally get bounces, unless they are giants like L'Equipe or Gazzeta Dello Sport. UEFA is trying to sell you a place in the WC, if possible. If, for example, you buy a VIP card for a match, UEFA will charge you a well-known "hospital" food and drink at half time, which should be included in the price of the ticket, which you did not even consume at all.

There is simply no NBA. You get accreditation regardless of the house you worked for. It is necessary to apply in time and have a little luck. For All Star in Los Angeles, which we visited two years ago, there was no denial for journalists, although the capacity was very limited (Staples receives 19,000 viewers, and the audience's interest was at least five times higher).

Going to say the NBA Finals, it's really not an easy venture. TV House must expose a serious amount of money for such a trip. Return air tickets for Europe, round trip tickets from east to west coast, or vice versa, as there are usually six games, a commentary for a minimum of four matches, a two-minute parquet report before the start of each match, two hotels, and some 20 days stay in The US, without any doubt, costs a lot of money.

NBA All Star is another story. Everything is happening in one city in three days. A hotel for journalists is always across the hotel where all players and coaches stay. You have a contact person who is constantly available to you. Immediately after landing, you get a ton of magazines and guides with all possible statistics, and a schedule for all three days of competition in the darkness. Press center works 24 hours. Breakfast and lunch are in the press center every day. Dinner is in the other part of the hotel. You have plenty of food and drinks in the hall from 15:00 until midnight. From the hotel to the hall and back you have transportation every hour.

It does not matter where you are from Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Nagorno-Karabakh, you have the same conditions for work and the same approach to everything as the American media (from the ex-yu, I think that the All Star Game was visited by my colleague from Croatia Drazen Brajdic who works for " list. "Since 1994, Minneapolis regularly monitors the event from the scene, so 19 performs in a row).
Of course, to do the most important job, i.e. interviews with the biggest stars, there is also a bit of journalistic courage, for, for example, about Bryant's table I at one point counted 87 journalists (around the table of David West during All Star 2008, there were five), so asking one question is not easy.

Everything is around you by the former and current masters of basketball. David Robinson, Robert Horry and Sam Perkins work for the NBA, so they are available to reporters all the time (the Admiral now seems to be playing, while Perkins and, in particular, Horry, on an enhanced diet). Paul Pierce was donated to Dallas in 2010 with a Kellner suit of blue and socks over 30 cm long, from which the sources of the shoes were kidnapped from the Prince's concert. Pierce loves to wear sunglasses indoors, which according to Stern's rules is prohibited.

The Duncan team is the person you can always point out in these manifestations as a notion of modesty. Backpack over one shoulder, polo shirt and handling all people on the way to his media table. In general, the Team on All Star looks like a student who fled from the sixth time, not a four-time NBA champion. Simply all of this halabuka is not particularly important for him, but he is also pleasant to all the interlocutors.

In a flood of bizarre clothes H figures who earn $ 10 million on average, for elegance, and I was in five All Star games, led by Dwyane Wade, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett. Chris Paul is always decent dress. Ray Allen wears exclusively suits, while Rondo wears a sweater and shirt under the influence of KG. Kevin Durant was so constructed that almost none of his suit was standing, while Carmelo Anthony either totally guessed or completely missed. Russ Westbrook made a big step in matching the incomparable one, but everyone absolutely criticizes it, but he does not care at all. In the last six years, Entertainment Star also comes to All Star, who make an article about the style of dressing up players and their wives.

Each of the players who are not put on the media at their disposal on Friday and Saturday pay a big fine. The champion of such sentences was the best player of all time, Michael Jordan, who regularly paid six digits to play golf. The response champion is unmatched by Dwight Howard. In New Orleans, some of them from Colombia have been hounded to take off their shirt and show muscularity (as it really is rarely seen) in front of all the journalists gathered. Howard's shoulder blades are so wide that they look like they wear those NFL shields (he's the only man I've seen that shoulders of muscles are cut in two directions. Something that is impossible to describe in words).

As Yao Ming's career lasted, a huge number of Chinese journalists traveled this way, who simply scrambled everything in front of him. It's fascinating to watch the Chinese pranks in paper pineapples, omelets and sausages and then push it into bags for later, or how the efficiency of the piranha destroys all the mafia they find. The digestive tract is fantastic, because you are watching an apple-eating and mashed potatoes, all of which extinguishes fruit yoghurts without any problems. You know how our people are always wondering at what speed canapés, cookies and general food on all cocktails and receptions, but all this is the transient time of the snail for the Western elite. It is always comical to watch crowds at food tables on the cultural and ultimate west, while gentlemen with a salary of a few million a year from the crowded plates come out of the hinges.
The Best All Star I've followed from the spot is the one in Dallas 2010, when the record for the number of spectators in one basketball game was set, as much as 108 thousand. Americans say they are growing in Texas, and when the controversial owners of Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban get tricky in the story then it is clear that such an event must be grandiose.

The video display above the ground at Cowboys Stadium is the largest HD video display in the world in halls or stadiums 48 meters long, 21 meters high. So much bigger than the basketball court. Jerry Jones, the owner of the NFL team Dallas Cowboys, a man famous for speeding out the coach and carrying firearms, has the habit of bringing his grandchildren to the stadium, putting them in a box, then the staff joins the "playstation" on this huge video display and boys play Cowboys players are trained below.

An invasion of a sponsor, a "group" of girls and other women of dubious morals in a city like Dallas three years ago is something I had never seen before. As my friend said in the hotel "the lift can not start from the weight of silicone".

How many NBA players have to take care of, maybe this story is best told. One player (not to mention the name) had a "close encounter" with a beautiful girl during the All Star weekend several floors under his room. Seven months later, his manager contacted him with a story that a lawyer asking for a talk about paying for a baby coming to the world. When he found out who the girl was, the player only laughed and said that it was impossible because he used the protection. A few months later, the DNA analysis found that the child was really his and had to pay a serious sum for the maintenance of mother and child. What happened? The player threw the used protection into the waste basket. After he left the room, Miss went to the basket and ... you can connect the rest ...
In a spectacular party organized by Lebron and Jay-Z in Ghostbar, there were such female jackals and predators that we have been cheering for the whole time between the women's players who appeared here and the young aspirants in their place (On Every All That We Go to From the kissing, we rank NBA players for the beauty of their women or girls. I'm still headed by Kevin Garnett's wife, who I was so much in Dallas that she was eating an eyebrow at some point).

Thanks to friends from the NBA and TNT Television for a duel competition, I had a place just below the basket and watched from the immediate worst performance ever, that Gerald Wallace, who blew his bloody eyes from half a field to knock off two hands from the two-legged !?

The most spectacular live player is unbeaten Lebron James. You need to see this.

The best performance of a player remains to me kicking the trophies of Jason Capone 2008 in New Orleans, who was in such a trans and probably would have scored a triple from half the field. All the players in the field jumped out of luck when he entered the series (Such a shooter only with Pedulakis can sit on the bench).

All Star is sincerely much more good for entertainment, socializing, painting with favorite players, field activities and contacting the game itself, which is unfortunately worse year after year.

Much more are being monitored Saturday's competitions, although for a while it's been a good impression that all dunkings are seen and that there are no special orginalities. We watched the live performance of Blake Griffin in LA 2011 and expected to break everything, but the racing began halfway through the competition, and after a jump over the hood of the car, the first comment was "This is Marko Milic better done 15 years ago." Simply put, Vince Carter slammed the slats too high and compared to his domination in Oakland everything looks pale and already seen. The threes are continuously good, but the spectacle can not be built around the quick shot of the three, but around the dunk and the East-West game. It used to take two quarters for a while, so the other half played for victory. Today, kissing usually lasts the whole match.

Nevertheless, regardless of these defects, if you save some money, you get on the bookmaker, if you get some things done, go if you can at All Star Weekend. Better spend, socializing and fun in the basketball world than these three days in February are simply gone.