2011 NBA Slam Dunk Contest Video Recap

Justin Bieber, your All-Star MVP

​Travel day today back from Phoenix, so I'm submitting the ultimate Cliffs Notes version of dominant performances during the NBA All Star weekend. (I'll be back at full blog strength tomorrow.)

Here goes:

- Justin Bieber was named most valuable player of the celebrity game on the strength of a surprisingly quick crossover dribble and the blind adoration of thousands of preteen girls. He promptly fulfilled his contractual obligations by giving Usher 90 percent of the MVP trophy.

- James Jones won the three-point shooting contest and promptly received a five-year, $75 million offer from Isiah Thomas to come play two guard for him at Florida International.

- Despite vehement protest from Christina Aguilera, Josh Groban welcomed "the ramparts" back to the national anthem.

- Apparently there were people watching Rihanna's lips because Twitter was littered with tweets about her lack of lip-synching skills. I never made it past her thighs and fruity booty. BIG fan of Rihanna.

- Kobe said all sorts of bullshit about it being time for the younger generation to take over and then promptly went out and took 26 shots, one short of the All Star game record.

BLAKE GRIFFIN (Winner)

There are about a hundred different iterations of Griffin's performance Saturday night on YouTube. I liked this one the best because it's from the vantage point of a fan underneath the hoop. Crazy good. We had a discussion at the hotel bar Saturday night, me and a few of the other soccer dads, and we were trying to pinpoint Blake Griffin's dunk style as compared to past dunk contest legends. We came up with Dominique Wilkins if you put him in Karl Malone's body (and gave him Dennis Johnson's freckles). Sounds about right.

SERGE IBAKA

Silver lining with this dunk is that the door has now been opened for Blake Griffin to save the teddy bears of all nine of Antonio Cromartie's kids on the same dunk in 2012.

DEMAR DEROZAN

Any time someone needs to avoid decapitation on a dunk, the contest is better. Thank you, DeMar DeRozan.

JAVALE MCGEE

The least impressive of the signature dunks in the contest because (1) this was done with almost zero force and (2) it took McGee four or five energy-sapping attempts to convert, and through the magic of editing you've been spared these.

Listen to Sean Pendergast on 1560 The Game from noon to 3 p.m. weekdays and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SeanCablinasian.