Monday Morning Musings on the NBA All-Star Game, or does everybody dig the long ball? - Bill Livingston

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Here in the Slam Dunk City, the popularity of pro basketball was never more clearly demonstrated than on Saturday night.

That was when amazing athletic ability and skills learned over many years -- or, alternatively, a snowstorm and polar cold -- kept Clevelanders inside, watching a midwinter's night hoop dream.

The top TV ratings nationwide for NBA All-Star Saturday Night were Cleveland (7.9), Atlanta (7.7), San Antonio (7.4), New York (7.2), Portland (6.1).

• At that moment in time, Cleveland could have claimed to be Indianapolis before the Colts got Peyton Manning -- a basketball town.

Or, maybe, everybody was watching TNT's Saturday Night All-Star contests  instead of "The Harder They Fall" on Turner Classic Movies because the latter too closely reminded many fans of various Browns quarterbacks.

• Anyway, no matter the cause, the ratings were the biggest surprise since I realized people will actually watch the Pro Bowl. Most every All-Star Game in every sport  sort of caricatures the game it is supposed to celebrate.

Maybe not so much in baseball, although making World Series home-field advantage hinge on an exhibition game is an inane idea. Certainly, home-court advantage means too much in the NBA for it to be decided in a no-defense game in which players mainly try not to get hurt.

• I mean, if that Ice Capades score in Columbus at the NHL All-Star Game last month (17-12) was really hockey, then just call me Gump.

• Entertainment is a big part of any all-star game. But special mention should go to Queen Latifah's national anthem. It was a poignant, soulful treatment of the hard-to-sing song. Or maybe, all this time after 9/11, it's still simply that any decent rendition of the anthem in New York carries an emotional weight that is so much greater than elsewhere.

• In the game itself, it was obvious that the Cavaliers' LeBron James was shooting for the 33 points he needed to pass Kobe Bryant as the all-time All-Star Game scoring leader. He finished with 30 points as the West won, 163-158.

The 321 combined points broke the record of 318 set last year.

The strange thing is that James piles up these huge stats in a game devoted alternately to showmanship and self-aggrandizement and still passes and defends well enough to avoid being stigmatized as a ball hog. LeBron had 22 at halftime and rallied the East from 20 points behind to an 83-82 halftime deficit.

• He was topped by Russell Westbrook's record 27 points in the half and near-record 41 in the game. It was clear from the opening minutes that either James or Westbrook would be the Most Valuable Player, depending on which team won.

• TNT play by-play man Marv Albert scored with a memory of the 1997 50^th anniversary All-Star Game in Cleveland, when the 50 greatest players of all-time were honored. Albert told of Wilt Chamberlain being "annoyed" and "grimacing" when Glen Rice broke his one-half scoring record.

Records were what kept Wilt interested over his career. He wanted the scoring record in every arena. When a new one opened and Wilt made his first visit, you could count on him trying to put up a huge number that would make him the leader in the clubhouse for years to come. Now we know he also wanted his exhibition game records to stand forever.

• Some rivalries don't ever stop. My favorite Wilt memory of that weekend in 1997 came when the 76ers' contingent among the 50 greatest players -- Wilt, Billy Cunningham and Hal Greer -- were seated just behind press row near the  court. A waitress brought armloads of popcorn and soda pop to the ex-players and their families. As Cunningham passed down the popcorn buckets, Chamberlain said to him, "Billy, did you tip this nice lady? Or did you pull a Bill Russell?"

• Westbrook shot from so far out in the first half that Austin Carr might have pulled everything from the tip of his tongue to his diaphragm screaming "From deeeeep in Madison Square Garden."

• There were two actual blocked shots in the game, by Pau Gasol and Carmelo Anthony.

The only member of the horrible (10-and-43) Knicks to make the game, Anthony shouldn't have been there. He scored 14 points, but took 20 shots and missed 11 of the 13 threes he tried.

• Dikembe Mutombo, seated at courtside, wagged his finger on the blocked shots, as he would do after his own snuffs, telling opponents not to challenge him again. In this All-Star Game, a defensive force like Dikembe was as out of place as one of Chamberlain's underhanded free throws would have been.

• Indicative of the vague impersonation of defense, the West tried only nine free throws and the East six. For what it's worth, all the East's were by Cavs with James making four of his five tries and Kyrie Irving, last year's MVP, sinking his only foul shot on an 11-point night.

• The 3-pointer has gone from comeback weapon to floor spacer to the game's signature shot. The 3-point shootout had bigger names than the slam-dunk contest this year.

The All-Stars had broken the old record for successful three's (with 38) in the game by the third quarter .

The best basketball players in the world heaved 263 shots up Sunday night and a stunning 133 of them - over half! - were 3-pointers. Together, the two teams were 48-tor-133.

• The dunks are still explosive and artistic (Westbrook hit his head on the backboard on one dunk), but really this All-Star Game was a very, very high level version of the games of HORSE you used to play with friends in the schoolyard.

It was a game of range then, and it is now, too.

• Remember the Reebok commercials from years ago, with a bombardier named Lamar Mundane, "raining destruction on your head?' The inside joke was that "mundane" means "ordinary."

When the NBA adopted the shot 35 years ago, it had something of a home run feel to it. Well, then this is, figuratively but not literally, the steroid era of 3-point shooting. Rolling barrages of them have almost become ordinary.

• Westbrook, sitting on 40 points, shot his second free throw in the last two seconds with a much higher arc than usual. He swished it. He was so hot, he couldn't even miss when he tried. But I'm with Marv Albert, who said Westbrook was trying to miss, get a back tap, and bury a field goal to tie the record.

• I wasn't with Albert, though, when he said the New York crowd was booing the West's Chris Paul for milking the clock with the lead in the last half-minute. I thought they were booing the East for not coming out on him and trapping or  fouling to try to win the game.

Even in an All-Star Game, when you have a mathematical chance to win, you have to try.

Don't you?

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