LOS ANGELES, 16 February 2004 — Indiana Pacers guard Fred Jones won the NBA’s slam-dunk contest for the first time despite narrowly failing to convert a pass from a friend in the crowd Saturday.
Golden State Warriors guard Jason Richardson looked set to triumph for the third consecutive year but miscued with his final attempt.
“Jason is the premier dunker in the league and I just came out to try to give him a challenge,” Jones told reporters.
Jones stunned fans ahead of his final attempt by throwing the ball to a friend in the crowd, who then tossed an almost perfect pass over the basket. The ball, however, slipped out of the guard’s hand as he tried to complete the spectacular play.
Past winners of the popular contest include Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Vince Carter.
Earlier, Voshon Lenard of the Denver Nuggets was the surprise winner of the three-point shootout when he defeated 2002 and 2003 champion and favorite Peja Stojakovic of the Sacramento Kings.
Stojakovic, widely regarded as the league’s top shooter, finished in the top two for the fourth consecutive year.
Baron Davis of the New Orleans Saints won the sports skills challenge, conquering an obstacle course designed to highlight the talents of the league’s point guards.
The contests were part of the buildup for NBA All-Star Game between teams representing the Western and Eastern conferences the next day. The crowd featured many celebrities including Oscar-winning actor Jack Nicholson and world heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis, who announced his retirement from the ring earlier this month.
Stern Predicts NBA Involvement With Olympics Will Go On
As far as National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern is concerned, global is good. Stern said Saturday he didn’t believe a majority of NBA owners agreed with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban in thinking his players to valuable to risk in Olympic and other international competition.
“I don’t think Mark’s view is representative of the majority at all,” Stern said.
Cuban’s recent remarks provoked the ire of US 2004 Olympic coach Larry Brown, who said that if the first Dream Team hadn’t played in Barcelona, international players like Dirk Nowitzki of Germany and Canada’s Steve Nash might not have been motivated to play in the NBA — where they star for Dallas.
“We think our players should have the option,” said Stern. “We are delighted to be part of the international basketball community. We think it makes it more interesting to our fans who learn more about the world through the international players then they ever thought they were going to learn.”
Stern said ultimately any decision on international play would rest with the league’s board of governors. But he is confident they will decide to keep the status quo.
He said the NBA and international organizations have also tried to help out with insurance to cover the contracts of NBA stars if they get injured.
“We have 70-plus elite international basketball players who paid the ultimate compliment to our game.
“So the notion of playing for their country, those number of games that happen in the Olympics, we don’t think is that big a deal.”
And Stern is committed to offering NBA basketball to a global audience.
“We have gone to Barcelona with Pau Gasol, we went to Paris with Tony Parker, we got to go to Mexico City with Eduardo Najera and now we are going to Shanghai and Beijing with Yao Ming,” he said.
The league has even commissioned a study to look into whether the NBA can have teams in Europe by the end of the decade. He said they will know a lot more in six months.
“We are going to study the issue,” said Stern. “It would require new buildings, ownership groups, certain amount of fan increase and their interest in us and ability to pay the kind of prices that are necessary to support a franchise. I think we will have a pretty good interim idea in the next six to nine months whether to move full speed ahead or go in another direction.”
China to Host First-Ever NBA Games
China’s Yao Ming is coming home this autumn, and the wildly popular national hero is bringing along a few of his colleagues.
Yao and the Houston Rockets will play the first-ever NBA preseason games in China against the Sacramento Kings on Oct. 14 and 17 in Beijing and Shanghai, league commissioner David Stern announced Saturday.
“The NBA China Games are the logical next step in the NBA’s long-term relationship with Chinese basketball and its fans,” said Stern, celebrating his 20th anniversary as league head honcho. “We have worked closely with the China Basketball Association as well as the sports authorities of Shanghai and Beijing.”
The two games are an extension of the league’s long standing relationship with China dating back to 1978-79, when the NBA champions Washington Bullets — since renamed as the Washington Wizards — traveled to China to play two exhibition games against national team of the People’s Republic.
It will also give basketball-wild Chinese fans a chance to see the popular, 223-centimeter Yao in his native country with the NBA Rockets, the team that drafted him into the league in 2002.
