Who needs Tim Donaghy when we can fix the Sprite Slam Dunk competition?!!

Was it just me, or was it awkward to watch the Sprite Slam Dunk competition during All-Star Weekend Saturday night in Phoenix? The whole "we've got a band" playing in the background and we'll announce the four contestants was a bit odd to me. The telling sign was the chummy and joking dance moves going on between Dwight Howard and Nate Robinson during the player intros. The look on JR Smith's face was priceless. It was one of "what the hell is going on here?" and "are these two dancing, smiling fools for real - I'm here to win this thing!!"

However, this was not JR's night and despite any best efforts the NBA, David Stern and the judges already knew who would be in the finals: Dwight Howard and Nate Robinson. The NBA wants to make this contest a spectacle for the weekend so they "chose" their dream match up. If JR would have done a dunk that no one has ever seen or done before (which there aren't any), he would have had a chance.

It did set up nice for the NBA, given little Nate would dress in green as if he were krypto-Nate and could take out Superman, aka Dwight Howard. Now dunking on a 6'11" Howard was most impressive and showed out-of-this-world athletic ability, however in my mind should not have overshadowed Howard's "throw the ball of the side of the backboard, jump from outside the free throw lane and throw down a MONSTROUS dunk" dunk.

The dunk contest was pretty good overall and Dwight Howard dunking on a 11 or 11.5 foot hoop (with a terrible pass from injured Jameer Nelson) was alright. His decision to do a free throw line dunk should be second guessed. In the end, it was great to see Nate Robinson not take 15 tries to complete a dunk in the finals (like he did a few years back). He should be commended for such clean and tough dunks. At least now the dunk competition and All-Star weekend are exciting for the fans.

Perhaps LeBron James can dunk on Sean O'Connor in next year's dunk contest in Dallas... we shall see!

Check out the video here.

From the "not so surprising" world of the bazaar

Well, when I first saw this headline/teaser on CNN.com, I figured this was the next Flavor Flav dating-type reality show on some random cable station (boring!). I could see parts of this contest being on the next reality TV show of some third-rate station in the States... other than of course the tragic ending.

However, this story is more from the land of the real and seems very telling of today's economic times. This may actually be a very telling story from the land of the next bubble burst: China. Printed without permission from CNN. Enjoy...


Chinese mistress contest takes tragic turn
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- A married Chinese businessman who could no longer afford five mistresses held a competition to decide which one to keep.

The businessman and his spurned mistress met in Qingdao, pictured here last August, local media report.

But the contest took a fatal turn when one of the women, eliminated for her looks, drove the man and the four other competitors off a cliff, Chinese media reported.

The spurned mistress died and the other passengers were injured, the reports said.

Police initially thought the car had plummeted off a mountain road in eastern China on December 6 by accident. Then they learned of the contest through a letter the dead woman had left behind, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said.

The 29-year-old woman, identified only as Yu, was a waitress when she met the businessman at a restaurant in the coastal city of Qingdao in 2000.

At the time, the businessman, identified only by his last name -- Fan -- was married and had four other mistresses, according to the Peninsula Metropolis Daily newspaper in Qingdao.
The women knew of one another, but none elected to break up with the man and give up their rent-free apartment and a 5,000 yuan ($730) monthly allowance, the reports said.

When the economy soured, the businessman apparently decided to let go of all but one mistress.

He staged a private talent show in May, without telling the women his intentions. An instructor from a local modeling agency judged the women on the way they looked, how they sang and how much alcohol they could hold, the Shanghai Daily said.

The judge knocked out Yu in the first round of the competition based on her looks. Angry, she decided to exact revenge by telling her lover and the four other women to accompany her on a sightseeing trip before she returned to her home province, the media reports said.

It was during the trip that Yu reportedly drove the car off the cliff. Fan shut down his company after the crash and paid Yu's parents 580,000 yuan ($84,744) as compensation for her death.

The four other women left him, as did his wife when she learned of the affairs.