15
Feb
All-Star Weekend Ruled by the ShaqaWockee
by Kenzie Rochelle
1 Comment | Posted by thatgirl in Making Waves
Yeah, yeah, there was a game. Yeah, yeah, it was set as Kobe vs. LeBron. Yeah, yeah, there was even the talk in L.A. of Shaq and Kobe bursting into the chorus of “Reunited.” But when the weekend ended, no one cared about the game or the score or Kobe or Lebron; it was all about Shaq. And what made it that much more shocking was it had nothing to do with basketball, nothing to do with Kobe, nothing to do with the plight or fate of the Phoenix Suns. Forget the song, it was all about the dance for ShaqaWockeeZ.
JabbaWockeeZ, the male dance crew that won the first season of America’s Best Dance Crew, flanked Shaq in his unusual introduction to Sunday night’s All-Star game of East versus West. (By the way, if you were wondering, the West won 146-119 and none other than Shaq and Kobe were named co-MVPs.) If JabbaWockeeZ was looking to make a trade, they might want to acquire Shaq in a permanent dance team role as Shaq came out a dancin’ machine, white mask and all, to claim the show.
Surrounded by the rest of the JabbaWockeeZ squad, Shaq jabbed and wockied with the best of them – despite appearing twice the size of any other individual. He came out in full warm-up attire but managed to turn his pants into a cape, however momentary, before skipping down the stairs onto the court once the music died out. Supposedly there was some sort of game to follow.
Of course, only those most familiar with Shaqnanigans could recover from the dance show to put on the game show…which meant Kobe, Shaq, and Phil. The players on the East squad would be doomed to relive the era of the Laker three-peat. And so it went. But no one seems to care. It’s all about the ShaqaWockeeZ.
Should you be interested in the actual basketball of All-Star Weekend, the rest of the weekend’s dancing was good but didn’t compare to the unprecedented Shaq attack. Highlights from the weekend included…
• The Miami Heat’s Daequan Cook won the Three Point Shootout in OT.
• 5’9” Nate Robinson leaped over Superman Dwight Howard to take the Slam Dunk Contest (wearing all green and now being called “Krypto-Nate”).
• Bulls guard Derrick Rose became the first rookie to win the Skills Challenge.
• Shaq and Kobe, former Lakers teammates, shared MVP honors.
• Kobe Bryant led the tallies with 27 points; LeBron James led the East with 20 points.
• The West outscored the East in every quarter but the second (where there was only a two point discrepancy, the smallest of any quarter).