All-Star Weekend without the stars?

By Jared Spinelli Sports Central Columnist

The way All-Star Weekend should be includes the stars, as the name "All-Star" refers to, not contests with (no offense) players only fantasy basketball junkies will know about.

For example - in the slam dunk contest, the participants are defending contest champion Desmond Mason, Steve Francis, Jason Richardson, and Gerald Wallace. "Stevie Franchise" surely belongs in the dunk contest ... but can you say the same for the rest? Sure, you can make a case for Mason - who won last year's competition, however, in the regular season, Mason averages just about 11 points a game.

Then you have two rookies in Richardson and Wallace. Sorry guys, but the average Joe knows absolutely nothing about either of you guys. Wallace averages 6.5 minutes in the regular season, never mind 6.5 points. Richardson, a starter for the Golden State Warriors, has shown promise in his rookie year ... but I don't care how well he can dunk - I am just not interested in seeing this guy dunk.

If you go up to an average basketball fan and say the names of this year's four competitors, I am willing to wager the only person the majority of the fans would know of is one - Francis. This year's contest has four competitors - two of whom I feel shouldn't even be near the contest, never mind in it.

The solution? Well, the first step is simple: if you are asked to participate in a certain contest, you do so unless you are injured - or get fined by the league. Being an All-Star is a privilege, not a hassle. If you are lucky enough to be an All-Star, suck it up, get up off your lazy butt, and give back to the people that pay you money - the fans.

With that rule in place, on the Saturday night before the All-Star game, the fans will be treated, not bored, with the Slam Dunk Contest and the Three-Point Challenge. The dunk contest, under my new rules, would see the NBA fans vote for their top six favorite dunkers the league has to offer. The top two vote getters would receive byes in the dunk tournament.

If the fans get to vote for their favorite dunkers, we will end up being treated to a dunk contest featuring Francis, Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, Baron Davis, and that guy ... what's his name? Michael Jordan? Yes, that's it! How about that list of six guys? I think that beats Francis, Mason, Richardson, and our old pal Gerald Wallace.

I will put up my entire savings, and my house, and my car, and my sister, and my dog, and my Ray Bourque autographed hockey puck if my proposed dunk contest does not draw higher Neilson ratings then this year's dunk contest will (by the way, I predict that this year's contest will be seen by less people than Animal Planet's special on how to neuter little kitties).

Then comes the Three-Point Challenge. Well, have I got an idea for those so-called League "experts." What do you say we gather the six NBA players with the highest three-point shooting percentage (there'd be a minimum number of attempts, of course) and throw them onto the court Saturday night.

They do their thing, shoot the threes, and the top four participants who made the most shots move on to the second round, where we have two head-to-head matchups. Winners move on to the final, where we crown a champion! Sounds easy, right? Well, it should be easy.

Then comes the game itself. Look at this year's teams. How in the world is Jerry Stackhouse not on the All-Star team? Do the Eastern Conference coaches, who vote for the reserves, close their eyes whenever they play the Pistons? If Vince Carter never got injured, Baron Davis would have been sitting at home ... also a travesty.

What about Elton Brand? Thanks to Shaquille O'Neal, Brand is in Philadelphia for the game. All Brand did was be one of the best power forwards in the game for the first half of the season. What did Chris Webber do to deserve a starting position in the game? All Webber did was miss almost half of his team's games to injury. No offense to Webber, but he shouldn't be where he's going to be Sunday night.

There are a lot of things that can be fixed in the NBA right now. One of them is the All-Star Weekend. The fixes are simple - common sense, almost. But, it doesn't seem that easy for the people that can fix them. Maybe after the league officials notice that the ratings for All-Star Weekend resemble the grade point average (GPA) of Ferris Bueller, that they will try to make a change.

Gotta love the NBA.