this past weekend i watched the ENTIRE All Star Saturday Night. i don’t remember doing that ever honestly. i used to rag on the NBA with regularity, but like the page being turned on the NFL, i have become a fanatic about the NBA. i bought season tickets for the Hornets for the rest of the season. THE HORNETS! with the ASG of course came all the lead up from all the national writers….”NOLA needs this…blah blah blah”. i kind of got tired of it. i got tired of it because i don’t like NOLA being a charity case anymore. we get it, the hurricane happened, we’ve moved on, people are rebuilding, life is advancing. people were doubting NOLA could pull off the ASG. seriously…after the Sugar Bowl and BCS title game with LSU, people were wondering if the ASG could go off without a hitch. well, OF COURSE everything worked out. what was cool was reading some of the articles in the aftermath. one of my favorite writers is The Sports Guy. the article he wrote made me think “he gets it”, which is surprising because he’s written stuff that kind of made you think he thought it was stupid for the NBA to keep the game here. i loved it. i’m even going to email him to tell him, and i haven’t written anyone at ESPN since college when someone wrote about Kareem and then a week later i SAW Kareem in an elevator (he wasn’t very friendly).

having the ASG here was so incredible, and it wasn’t just the basketball, which by itself was fantastic (did you see the dunk contest?!?). the day of service thing the NBA did made me feel so good. it wasn’t just some random people going out to work on houses, it was players, it was execs, it was writers, etc. i’ve hated on Kobe since he was drafted (by the Hornets!), because i remember watching the draft that night and going “dude, you just got drafted out of HS, shut up and just play!” instead of bagging the day and using his pinky as an excuse, he was out there. the commercial they ran during the ASG with the pictures from Friday made me actually say something good about Kobe Bryant.

the game itself was great, and i loved how they showed off NOLA, especially the music. it was awesome. it was cool seeing something you’ve been around for so long on tv like that. what’d be cool is if Harry Connick Jr actually played around here. he could do a residency concert set type thing and it would be great. maybe someone will figure that out one day and make it happen, just like people figured out NOLA’s not still under water.