Some post-All-Star farce and post-trade-deadline thoughts:
What does it say when the Most Valuable Player of a game — an All-Star game, no less — misses 9 of 13 shots and commits seven turnovers?
It says you're incredibly desperate to award this trophy because, hey, you've got it and everyone expects it to get handed out.
This year's All-Star Game — and it makes me groan to even type that, considering what a joke the game was — didn't deserve an MVP award. When your "All-Stars" are playing half-speed, no-defense basketball, how can you tell which guy is most valuable?
Is it the guy with the most fantasy points?
Sadly, that probably was the chief criterion.
Allen Iverson's line was not the only set of statistics that screamed out "This was a crummy game!"
How about this: The teams combined for a hefty 134 points in the paint, while facing defense roughly equivalent to that a team faces in a pregame layup drill, yet they still only managed to shoot 45.7 percent from the field.
Perhaps the saddest moment of All-Star weekend was Magic Johnson, shamelessly fronting for his employer, TNT, declaring after the Saturday night events that the All-Star game "is back." Johnson offered the opinion that the clincher of the deal would be if players would come out Sunday and play a real game, which, of course, they failed to do. Note to Magic: Saying it's back doesn't make it back.
Here's how "back" the All-Star game is: TNT spent a record $10-million plus to cover and promote the event, but it drew the lowest TV rating in the history of the contest.
Early in the season, with Houston off to a slow start and Orlando out of the chute fast, it appeared that the Magic might have gotten the better of the Tracy McGrady for Steve Francis/Cuttino Mobley trade.
But the Rockets have been hot lately and have the better record while playing in a tougher conference, while the Magic are struggling. Mobley has been shipped to Sacramento, where there are already rumblings that he's a negative locker-room presence, and Francis ripped his teammates before the All-Star hiatus, then failed to show up for the first practice after the break.
Orlando diplomat Grant Hill tried to shrug off Francis' absence, but Pat Garrity expressed the opinion of some team members when he said it was annoying.
"Everyone's time is important," Garrity said. "Everyone should respect everyone else's time."
Jazz say they never seriously discussed trading Carlos Boozer, which is a decision any right-minded Jazz fan should applaud. Boozer isn't a complete player yet, but he's only in his third season and he's still averaging 17 points and 9 boards and shooting 52 percent from the field.
Incidentally, in two games against the Lakers and Lamar Odom — for whom wild rumors had Boozer being traded — the Jazz forward posted by far the better numbers, and Utah won both games.
According to Peter Vecsey, LeBron James already has the big head. Vecsey says James was the least fan-available member of the Olympic team, and he wrote about an incident in which James chewed out underlings in the locker room for supplying him with "furry, feminine-looking slippers."
No way of knowing if this is true or not yet, considering the source, but it would hardly be surprising, considering that LeBron, while still in his teens, was nicknamed "King James."
That's got to make the crown fit a little tighter.
E-mail: rich@desnews.com