NBA All-Star Weekend, SNL40, and “Court Vision” LeBron 12s: While We’re Waiting…

Happy Monday, you guys. How are you celebrating your Presidents’ Day? Counting down the days until the gloves are popping in Goodyear? Reliving some Kyrie and LeBron All-Star weekend festivities? Wishing that you could go back to 1995 and do the whole Browns leaving thing all over again? I kid…Kind of.

It’ll be a quiet day around here due to the holiday, but we’ll do our best to keep you guys in the loop until we pick things back up for Tuesday morning. But While We’re Waiting…

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All-Star Weekend has come and gone. The Cavaliers (and the rest of the NBA) have some additional time off this year thanks to Adam Silver, so we’re left with a few days of dissecting what went down in New York (and…New Jersey). I spent much of the weekend wishing I would’ve made the trek, recalling how much I enjoyed being in New Orleans last year. Once the festivities started, however, I was able to justify everything thanks to the ability to not only watch multiple angles of Zach LaVine’s demolition of the dunk contest, but switch over to #SNL40 for much of Sunday night (more on this later).

Every time someone asks LeBron James why he won’t participate in a Slam Dunk Contest, all he should do is show them a clip of Saturday night. There’s little denying that James is one of the best in-game dunkers in the history of the league—Julius Erving, Michael Jordan and Vince Carter would round out the Mt. Rushmore—but there’s little to gain from a 30-year-old James competing against a high-flying 19-year-old who has effectively trained for the dunk contest his entire life.

Would it be great if the young stars competed in the dunk contest every year like back in the day? Sure. But if you watched Saturday night and didn’t appreciate what LaVine did to the rim, odds are that you’d be disappointed regardless of who was doing the flying.

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Saturday Night Live’s 40th Anniversary show aired on Sunday night, directly opposing the NBA All-Star game. While I watched the occasional play on TNT and followed along sparsely on Twitter, my attention was given to the show that I watched relgiously every Saturday night once I was allowed to stay up that late. I remember being a part of sleepovers in grade school where staying up was a privilege of circumstance, and watching SNL was one of the benefits reaped from said allowance.

Here’s a look at some of the highs and lows from Yahoo!

I won’t try to sit here and tell you that every season and every cast was a hit—far from it. But I find it inherently interesting when others claim that the cast they grew up on was the best, and the rest (and all to-be-constructed) casts don’t hold a candle. Just as my parents were able to enjoy the Belushi-Aykroyd-Chase years, my cast was that of Myers and Carvey and then into the Rock-Sandler-Schneider-Spade-Farley years. Classics, all of them. But that’s not to sleep on the guys and gals who just left—Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader… Two of the biggest shows in late night belong to former SNL cast members/writers. That place has been a hotbed of talent, and to see it all come together on one stage—despite the fact that it may not have needed a full 3.5 hours—was fascinating.

Sure, one can cherry pick cast members (over a 40-year span, mind you) who didn’t quite pan out, but they’re the minority. The old audition tapes, the fact that Jim Carey never got hired, Eddie Murphy’s return, Chris Rock’s introduction of Murphy… There are few things I DVR while I watch them, and the SNL40 show was one of them. I’ll go back at some point and watch a few skits, but the history and comedic pipeline produced by that show is unlike any other.

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With the dog days of winter in full force, there will undoubtedly be plenty of sweet takes. Here’s some #ActualSportswriting:

“Up from the Leeds: Meet Charles Barkley” by Jesse Washington (ESPN.com): “Unasked, Barkley mentions his biggest regret. It’s not spitting on that girl — he befriended her and her family, by the way — or any of his troubles with the law. It has nothing to do with an NBA championship. It’s not any of the thousands of statements that have made Barkley one of black America’s favorite dartboards. It’s much more pragmatic. It goes back to those train tracks, to Macedonia Baptist Church and the projects….”¹

“Frame Jobs: What we can learn about manipulating strike zones” by Ben Lindbergh (Grantland): “Sports fans spend a lot of time wondering what their teams aren’t telling them. If a player signs for more than his WAR suggests he’ll be worth, we wonder what WAR might be missing. If a top prospect is traded for a disappointing return, we wonder whether his old team became concerned about his makeup or discovered a hidden hole in his swing. If a team acquires multiple players who have something in common, we wonder whether their shared trait might, unbeknownst to the Internet, be the one weird trick that wins pennants. We imagine market inefficiencies everywhere.”

“Dean Smith remembered for his influence off the court” by Pat Forde: “The sport has had more than its share of rogues and charlatans, then and now. Dean Smith was not one of them – he wasn’t a perfect man or coach, but his combination of class and competitiveness was extremely rare. He not only won 879 games, for a time the all-time Division men’s record, he did it while earning more widespread respect and admiration than almost anyone in his hyper-competitive, oft-jealous profession.”²

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The Pro Basketball Writers Association announced their award recipients for 2014 and ESPN.com’s Ramona Shelburne cleaned up. She’s one of the several must-reads over at the four-letter network, so it’s great to see her rewarded for her incredible reporting.

One thing that stuck out to me was the criteria for how they judged columns: The winner had news/information, style/voice and a firm point of view. It was well-conceived, well-composed and well-argued and made the reader think. So, so many “columns” these days lack the “news/information” part and go straight to the bloviating “voice” portion. Glad to see the noise getting drowned out by the quality.

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And finally, this week’s Brew Sneaker du jour:³ Nike’s LeBron 12 “Court Vision”

You’ve all seen plenty of LeBron James- and Kyrie Irving-based sneakers around these parts. It’s almost to the point where Nike is staggering releases to have one of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ signature sneaks be front and center at any given time. While I have been unable to get my hands on either pair of the duo’s All-Star editions, I have been fortunate enough to pick up a pair of the “Court Vision” 12s that we discussed here—briefly—a little while back.

With an all-black upper, these 12s may very well be my favorite colorway to date, if only because of the details. The bright crimson and white pops are eye-catching enough. But if you look closer, the devil, as always, is in the details.

I had been aware of the woodgrain Hyperposite thanks to the bevy of other images that were leaked prior to the release. What I had not noticed was the “OHIO” that’s embedded in the sole once you look at both shoes together as I’ve shown above. When producing so many colorways of the same shoe (by my count, there have been the nine versions of this shoe released since October 30), it would be easy for Nike to simply change the colors and be done with it. Instead, they’ve taken a silhouette and added minor tweaks to each of them, making them all unique in their own way. I mean, just look at what thought went into the “Wheat” EXTs coming out later this year.

I’ve been on record saying that this is the most comfortable performance-based basketball shoe I’ve ever worn. I’ve been told that the Jordan XX9 and the model Under Armour made for Steph Curry are right there, if not better, but I haven’t had the chance to try either to this point. I’m not sure how many of you all play basketball (we obviously have plenty of runners), but if you don’t mind the $200 price tag, you can’t get much better than the LeBron 12. This colorway, and the details therein, would make this one my go-to if the price-based playing field was level.

Bonus: If you haven’t seen this mini 30 for 30 on James, Nike and adidas, I fully recommend checking it out. Talk about a butterfly effect. The full first chapter of this story airs on April 6 over at Grantland.

Until next week, have a great Monday, you guys.

1. Terrific reporting in this profile. The production is great, but the way it’s written, laid out—one of the best profiles of this year. I purposely used the quote above so that you can read for yourself what, exactly, Barkley’s biggest regret is. [↩]
2. So, so many great pieces have come from the unfortunate passing of Dean Smith. More incredible is that the man was so profound that every piece I’ve read has been different. Says so much. [↩]
3. Back on the weight-loss wagon. This weather isn’t helping, for the record. [↩]