I have to say, that game was respectably fun. It wasn't that dunk-heavy, really, not to the extent we're used to seeing in the ASG, and the East spent a good portion of the night throwing terrible outlet passes. But by the standards of All-Star contests, which we know ahead of time are not going to be played with textbook precision, this one wasn't bad. There was a strong individual performance from Kobe Bryant, who captured MVP honors with 37 points, 14 boards, three assists and three steals. There was a nice LeBron James-led comeback by the East to make the final six minutes close. And I actually found the Rihanna-Kanye halftime set to be damn entertaining. Am I crazy for thinking that? I know Rihanna missed a few notes, but we mustn't nitpick after the dual travesties that were the Super Bowl halftime show and today's Lenny Kravitz pregame lip-sync-athon.

The West's 148 to 143 victory caps off what by all accounts, Kravitz notwithstanding, has been a very successful weekend for the league and its L.A. hosts. It won't be long before the All-Star Game returns to Staples. The rejuvenation of downtown L.A., including the construction of the L.A. Live and Marriott/Ritz-Carlton complexes that served as home base for ASW activities this year, make Los Angeles pretty much the ideal location for this event. All-Star Weekend is the yearly occasion when the league fully embraces its connections to the worlds of celebrity and pop culture. No city provides a more fitting backdrop.

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It's looking bueno for the West so far. They lead 76 to 64 behind 21 from Kobe Bryant. At the break, he's the favorite for game MVP. Pau Gasol (6 for 6 shooting, three offensive boards) has been nice, too. The East keeps turning the ball over and isn't hitting the glass all that vigorously. The best news of all is that Lenny Kravitz has been sent to the locker room.

Proceed.

Hiya, chums. All-Star Sunday is here and luckily for everyone involved, it's not raining in Los Angeles. I'm en route to Staples Center, where the game itself is scheduled to start at 5:00 (which means close to 5:30). As you can see, the magenta carpet is ready to rock.

There are really only a couple things you can reasonably ask from an All-Star game. One is that there be no injuries. The other is that the game be close in the final six minutes so we can see players actually trying to win. I like the odds on both.

I'll be checking in with updates here, at SBN Los Angeles and on my Twitter feed. This is your All-Star Sunday open thread.

Down in the Staples Center media rooms, around mid-afternoon today, a rumor started to going around. I believe it was Jonathan Abrams of the New York Times who first passed it along. Blake Griffin, we were told, was getting ready to dunk over a car. The moment I heard it, I was skeptical. Not of the rumor, which seemed plausible enough - especially since Kia is a major league sponsor - but of how good the dunk, if Blake could pull it off, would actually be. I mean, consider the spatial geometry involved. A typical sedan is what, four feet tall at the middle and six feet in width? Not even the game's bounciest jumpers can clear such an object unaided, which meant there'd be some kind of lame-o shortcut. Like, Blake would jump off the bumper or something.

We almost didn't get to see it. Blake barely beat out DeMar DeRozan for one of two available berths in the final round. The other spot went to JaVale McGee, who wowed all by bringing out an extra hoop and dunking two balls at once. (Pic after the jump.) Blake ultimately advanced with a one-handed dunk off a pass from Baron Davis off the side of the backboard. It was nice, but DeRozan had executed nearly the same dunk but with a higher degree of difficulty - the pass was off the back of the backboard - earlier in the contest and received a lower score. Whatever. This was clearly set up to be Blake's night from the outset, so the judges waved him through to the finals.

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This afternoon, events at Staples Center kicked off with a press conference by Commissioner David Stern. The Commish rarely speaks without at least a few interesting things to say, and intrigue is higher than normal right now because of the lockout that no one wants but everyone seems to expect. Given the tenuous labor landscape, every utterance that Stern makes in the foreseeable future will be pored over and parsed like a new Bin Laden tape.

The first 10 minutes were given over to Stern's prepared remarks, which were basically a "state of the league" speech. "The game is in great shape" was his lead. He then walked through some ways in which the NBA is more popular than ever before segueing into what everyone in the room wanted to talk about: the labor negotiations. The owners and players' union have made proposals to each other, each side has rejected the other's proposal, and further meetings have been scheduled. Not much new, really, but after the jump I've summarized his follow-up comments about this and a few other topics raised by the press corps.

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Hi, all. I'm back in my perch high atop Staples Center, where fans are assembling for Saturday Night festivities. Commissioner Stern just got done with his press conference. I'll have more about this later. For pregame entertainment, some kind of high school show choir is performing inside the arena. I will not have more about this later.

The rumor going around, by the way, is that Blake Griffin is going to dunk over a car.

For the time being, until I can get my act together and get up a real post, this is your Saturday night thread.

Tonight All-Star Weekend shifted gears, moving from its informal meet-and-greet phase to actual events shown on TV. The fan-interactive Jam Session kept on rolling and, despite mucho heavy rains in Los Angeles, seemed pretty well attended. But the main attractions were the celebrity and rookie-sophomore games, and straddling the two was a press conference from Derek Fisher and union rep Billy Hunter. They spoke about a meeting held this afternoon in Beverly Hills between league owners and about two dozen players, concerning the terms of a new collective bargaining agreement.

Do I have to tell you that the celebrity game is completely pointless? Frankly, it's hard to imagine a better way of expressing pointlessness than to put the words "celebrity" and "game" right next to each other. But in person, it wasn't even that fun as a guilty pleasure. In fact, I suspect it's one of those events that's way less enjoyable in person than it is on the tube.

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If an earthquake were to level downtown Los Angeles right now, there would be no more NBA. Everyone - players, coaches, broadcasters, purveyors of Internet snark like yours truly - is here in one place, wandering about and gladhanding in a crazy, half-organized milieu. The players are shuttling between official league meetings and media sessions. Coaches are just kind of making the rounds informally and chewing the fat. The media hordes - and believe me, hordes is the most accurately descriptive term - are hovering everywhere with cameras and microphones, trying to figure out who's worth talking to.

For a n00b such as myself, two things jump out. First is what an enormous freaking operation this is. The league has taken over a section of L.A. that probably spans a good 10 by 10 city blocks. A great deal of it is dedicated to back-office operations, with whole ballrooms taken up by, say, IT personnel or league security. Dozens of league employees do nothing but stand around and tell people where to go. Outside the L.A. Live complex, crews are putting up huge lighting rigs for the "magenta carpet" arrival special on Sunday. The logistical work that goes on behind the scenes is staggering in scope.

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