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Dunk event soggy
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MICHAEL JORDAN was watching. Julius Erving was watching. That was the problem, they were just watching.
Concluding Saturday's All-Star Game weekend specialty events, 23-year-old Desmond Mason of the Seattle Super Sonics won an exceedingly lackluster slam dunk contest, beating five
even younger fellow no-names.
Fittingly, he won after Baron Davis of the Charlotte Hornets put on a blindfold and -- unlike Cedric Ceballos, who won wearing an alleged blindfold in 1992 -- missed everything with his final attempt.
No one expected Jordan, a two-time winner who is now an owner of the host Washington Wizards, or Erving, who was a judge here and who won the first Slam Dunk Contest in the old ABA in 1976, to participate. Their glorious playing days are now long over.
But it would have been nice if, say, defending champion Vince Carter or his predecessor, Kobe Bryant, had taken part.
Carter had to bow out with "jumper's knee". But he had promised he would watch. Carter had won after two years in which the dunk contest was not held. Bryant won it in 1997.
Bryant, who has an injured shoulder, had kept everyone in suspense as to whether he would come to Washington at all. He took a US$10,000 fine for skipping Friday's media day, but flew in from California for Saturday's practice.
But the 22-year-old Los Angeles Laker said he had no interest in competing in the dunk contest.
"I think I'm too old right now," he joked. "Maybe down the road I'll be able to compete a little bit in those things, do the things I used to do when I was 17."
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