NBA All Star Wrestling

After watching the NBA All Star activities it is hard to tell the difference between the NBA and the WWE.  First there was the Slam Dunk Contest where the league allowed Dwight Howard and Nate Robinson to take the Superman sketch to WWE-like levels.  The inclusion of the phone booth for Howard to morph into Superman combined with Robinson's use of the kryptonite thing would have been fine if it did not appear as if the whole thing was staged by an NBA version of Vince McMahon.  While the Slam Dunk Contest is meant to be more entertainment than sport, the activities of the All Star Game should make true sports fans feel a little sick and quite a bit used.  During the player introductions Shaq appeared with a mask.  Now, Shaq is a funny guy and if he had simply done this on his own, it would be easy for fans to say it was "just Shaq being Shaq".  But the League couldn't resist taking it to the next level by having a handful of dancers wearing the same mask and dancing around Shaq.  Once again, if it would have stopped there we might have been able to dismiss this as just "pure hollywood".  However, the real clincher was handing the game MVP to Shaq and Kobe together.  Are you kidding me?  Shaq scored only 17 points in 11 minutes of play.  Good but hardly MVP worthy.  This kind of blatant manipulation stinks of something less than sport.  Bash baseball Commissioner Bud Selig all you want, but he did make the baseball All Star Game something worth watching without turning it into the circus that the NBA did for their All Star game.  I guess the lesson to be learned is that if referees bet on the game and hence fix the outcome it is bad. If the NBA does it, its all in the name of entertainment.  Next year, lets just paint some faces and include a cage match.  At least, we wouldn't feel as if we were there to watch a game.