HOUSTON --
Ben Wallace stole the ball in the backcourt and headed upcourt
with a head of steam, passing the ball to Richard Hamilton
before he fed it to Chauncey Billups streaking in from the right side.
Billups scored to complete the 3-on-2 fast break,
giving the Eastern Conference All-Stars a four-point cushion early
in the fourth quarter that they never surrendered.
Yep, even in the All-Star game it was the
Detroit Pistons who were the best team on the floor.
Led by 29 points from LeBron James, the East came back from
a 21-point deficit and defeated the West 122-120 Sunday
in the 2006 All-Star Game. But while James was the MVP and the
main offensive star for the winners,
the complexion of the game was changed by the
defensive intensity exhibited by the four members of the Pistons
after they checked into the game late in the third quarter.
"Y'all saw it. We went out there and did us," Hamilton said.
"That's how we play.
"Once we got out there and tried to get stops, we got a lot of stops.
We wanted to show that we're a great team, and we showed it tonight."
Chauncey Billups scored seven of the East's first nine points in the final period,
and the East never trailed after Wallace's steal led to
Billups' layup two minutes into the fourth quarter.
Kobe Bryant tied the game at 120 with 31 seconds left on a
long 2-pointer before Dwyane Wade rebounded a miss
by Allen Iverson and scored from the lane with 16.6 seconds left.
The West had two chances, but LeBron James got a piece of Tracy McGrady's jumper
with 8 seconds left, and Kobe Bryant lost control of the ball
in the lane moments later.
"On his way up I got a piece of his arm and a piece of the ball,
which made it short," James said of McGrady's jumper.
Rasheed Wallace came up with the ball --
a steal for a member of the Pistons, what a surprise! --
and passed it upcourt, where Vince Carter was alone for an uncontested dunk.
He missed it, but it didn't matter. The outcome was already secured.
McGrady led all scorers with 36 points.
James became the youngest MVP in the history of the event.
"I think Charles Barkley kick-started us.
He said at halftime the game was over," James said.
As is usually the case at this event,
the moments featuring some comic relief drew the loudest reactions
from the unusually sedate crowd.
One of the first came when Shaquille O'Neal had the ball
on the perimeter and tried to execute a give-and-go with
Dwyane Wade in the low post, Wade's blind over-the-head pass failing
to find its 340-pound target.
Vince Carter and O'Neal had a chuckle of their own
in the game's opening minutes when
Allen Iverson lobbed an alley-oop pass for Carter some 15 feet in the air.
The ball sailed out of bounds,
with Carter turning to grin at Iverson with an expression that seemed to say
"I can jump, but not that high."
Steve Nash had a similar episode moments later when
Tracy McGrady couldn't get his fingertips on a too-high alley-oop pass,
although Shaq had no problem catching his own alley-oop pass _
an illegal one he threw to himself off the backboard on his second
free throw attempt, a move that he capped with a resounding two-handed
slam that caught everyone but the referees.
They whistled him for a lane violation, and Shaq exited with a grin
as East coach Flip Saunders subbed in his four Detroit Pistons All-Stars,
playing them together along with Boston's Paul Pierce.
The first quarter ended with the score tied at 28,
with none of the Pistons doing anything to distinguish themselves _
except for Rasheed Wallace attempting a 3-pointer left-handed and barely grazing
the rim.
Carter converted a nifty alley-oop dunk off a pass from former teammate
Toronto teammate Chris Bosh 5 1-2 minute into the second quarter,
temporarily injecting some excitement into a surprisingly lifeless game.
But the one of the only highlights over the remainder of the half
was a missed dunk by Carter that bounced so hard off the back rim
that it landed at the opposite 3-point line.
The West closed the second quarter with a 23-8 run for a 70-53 halftime lead,
McGrady leading all scorers with 17 points on 8-for-12 shooting.
McGrady scored the first four points of the second half and was up to 26 points
by the time he went to the bench with 6:19 left in the quarter,
but Wade kept the East within striking distance with a little of everything _
an acrobatic dunk here, and assist or a steal there _
and James got the deficit inside of double-digits by scoring 13 points
in the first six minutes of the period.
The defensive highlight of the quarter was Ben Wallace's work against first-time
All-Star Pau Gasol late in the quarter,
blocking two of the Spaniard's shots on one possession to force a true
All-Star Game rarity _ a 24-second violation.
The West's lead was down to 97-94 at the end of the third quarter,
and a three-point ply by Billups 6 seconds into the final quarter
produced the first tie since early in the second quarter.
The defensive intensity of the Pistons' All-Stars put the East ahead,
and O'Neal added another light-hearted moment midway through the quarter
when he dunked with two hands and did a chin-up as he finished,
looking through the backboard and mugging for the cameras mounted
on the rear side of the glass.
MVP -- LeBron James
Kobe & Shaq
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