You know, an NBA uniform is supposed to be a sacred thing. It’s not supposed to be hacked up, or have laces sewn into the side. What if Queen Latifah decided to squeeze her rippled body into a size XXXL Greg Ostertag number?

So were we really supposed to get all excited about Mariah Carey in some skin tight retro-Bulls jersey mini-dress? Or drool on ourselves at her floor length, skin tight Wizards jersey?

You bet your ass we were. Wow! Hello!

I think I speak for basketball fans all over the world when I say that despite the fact that she’s a certified whack-job, and that I was rooting for her to literally pop out of that Wizards “jersey”, Mariah was the absolute highlight of the All-Star Weekend. Wow.

Have we had enough Magic Johnson yet? The only thing that kept me from slitting my wrists this weekend was that ESPN only had two hours of coverage on Friday night. Because if I’d have had to put with any more Stuart Scott and his babbling, phony “street” act, I think I’d have done the Frankie Pentangeli thing from The Godfather Part II and offed myself in the bathtub.

But on Friday night we had to watch Magic and Isiah in some horrendous game of “horse” (actually N-B-A.) Magic was back on Saturday to humiliate himself in another celebrity 3-on-3 game, in which he appeared in an LA Sparks jersey for chrissakes. He then showed up in the TNT booth to babble through the slam dunk contest and the three-point shootout.

And on Sunday night he was on the set with Ernie, Kenny and Charles for the pregame. Please, go away, Magic. Just leave. Larry Bird doesn’t show up at All-Star Weekend as America’s guest and annoy everyone on the planet non-stop.

Sigh.

Friday night was highlighted by a “celebrity” game. Featuring the likes of Brian McKnight, the kid from Malcom in the Middle, Ice Cube, superhot WNBA player (there’s a usual oxymoron) Nikki McCray, Jamie Foxx and Jonahtan Lipnicki, who had a rough start like Michael Jordan in last night’s game, but actually broke through quicker.

Justin Timberlake was there again, prompting TNT to show him shooting over Kenny Smith in last year’s 3-on3 “tournament” and talking trash to The Jet. Unfortunately, despite rumors of a reunion, we didn’t see Britney, though.

Tim McGraw was the number one pick of Charles Barkley’s team, and Chuck admitted he picked Tim because he was hoping Tim’s wife, Faith Hill would join Charles on the bench. She did. Barkley’s team lost, but sitting next to Faith, he just didn’t care.

On Saturday we had the Rookie-Sophomores game (which is ironic, since so few of the second-year players were ever sophomores in college) and Danny Ainge and John Thompson were on hand with semi-comatose Dick Stockton. Ainge was mad that nobody was playing defense and Thompson acted like he didn’t care. This pissed anyone off who watched the 1988 Olympic Men’s Basketball Team crash and burn because their “coach” picked a bunch of guys who couldn’t shoot because he thought their defense would overwhelm, taller, stronger, more mature foreign players. Who was that coach? Oh, never mind.

Jay Williams looked at home in an All-Star environment and so did fellow Bull Tyson Chandler. Since Tyson is used to to getting out of the way and letting players dunk, he fit right in, in this game.

Gilbert Freakin’ Arenas scored 30 points. Whatever.

The only redeeming quality in this game was how mad Mike Fratello, the sophs coach, got at Cotton Fitzsimmons, the rookie coach for playing zone defense. That, and Mike having Marv Albert on the bench as one of his assistants.

Then we had some thing called the skills competition. In basically, a glorified summer basketball camp drill, NBA point guards Jason Kidd, Gary Payton, Tony Parker and Stephon Marbury ran an obstacle course. It was pretty cool, actually. The highlight was Stephon Marbury proving he has no idea how to throw and inbounds pass, and Tony Parker missing six straight 19 footers and then saying “screw it” and taking off to finish the course.

I was sure that Gary Payton would win, but Kidd beat him when Payton, for the second straight time, forgot to grab the last ball and go in for a layup. Payton told Craig Sager, “I let him win.” I think Gary thinks he means it.

I like Jason Kidd as much as the next guy, but let me give him a little advice. Stop dragging your wife Jumanji (or whatever her name is) to everything! We get it! You don’t hit her anymore! You don’t need to keep trying to prove it. We’re tired of her. We’re glad you worked it out. Now just leave us alone!

At the three-point shootout we found that Charles had lost his voice somewhere in an Atlanta strip club the night before. In fact, human fire alarm announcer Kevin Harlan tried to convey a message from the producer to Chuck that he should go home and rest his voice and Charles basically told him to shut up. Only the night before, Charles had called Kenny Smith an idiot and meant it in an endearing way. This is why we love Charles.

In the three point contest we got to see proof that Antoine Walker really can’t shoot, and that while David Wesley had the right idea by not looking at the rack to take the next ball, he shot the ball at such a snail’s pace that he coudn’t even get all of the shots off.

In the finals we had a rematch of Peja Stojakakakokovich and Wes Person. Wesley was set to go first, then at the last second was called back and Peja had to to. As Peja was shooting in his round a horn went off at 24 seconds, even though it was supposed to be a 60 second round. Peja stopped for a moment and then started shooting again and ended up with a 12.

The judges (assuming there were any) decided it wasn’t fair and that Peja should go again. So he got ready and then they decided to let him rest and let Person go. Guh. Who’s running this thing, Amtrak?

Finally, Person went and Peja beat him, just like last year.

The dunk contest got off to it’s usual awful start with Richard Jefferson being boring and Amare Stoudamire missing his first dunk. But then Jason Richardson and Desmond Mason put on a show.

Mason did a double pump, lefty between the legs dunk that brought down the house. Only to be topped in Richardson’s final dunk with a 180 through the legs from behind reverse lefty dunk. We won’t get into how screwed Mason got on his last dunk which allowed Richardson to only need a 49 to win.

The judges, were all former winners of the event, including Dominique Wilkins, who slammed home an alley-oop in the celebrity three-on-three game earlier that night.

That three on three game featured not only Frankie Muniz, but also Ashton Kutcher. Which also meant we got an obligatory Brittany Murphy shot. I love Brittany, but I’m so sick of her, I’m demanding she go into media withdrawal for at least six months. Let’s just remember her for this:

Next year I hope I get invited to play in the celebrity 3-on-3 game so I can taunt Kutcher with, “Dude, where’s your game? Where’s your game, dude? Dude!”

Hey, a guy can dream. Besides, Campbell’s getting tired of always watching the All-Star Weekend at my house, she wants to be there in person. So, anybody at the NBA Office who can hook me up…

Dude, where’s our tickets?

Gladys Knight appeared Pip-less and sang “Midnight Train to Georgia” and to remind us that she’s not dead.

Kool and the Gang showed up to sing the song that ends or starts every wedding reception in the world, “Celebration” and the NBA players were introduced.

Vince Carter got booed because the PA announcer left the word that he had given his starting spot to Michael Jordan, for the end of the intro. Oops!

Vince would have gotten more credit if he hadn’t given off the “I didn’t want to give that old jackass my starting spot” vibe all night, though.

And then last night we had the actual game. Former ER babe Gloria Ruben caused everybody in America to simultaneously say, “Nice career move, leaving that show, Gloria.” If your remember the plot, she actually moved to Atlanta to work and eventually die of AIDS. Hmmm.

Martina McBride belted out the national anthem, and we were ready to go.

Thanks to Marv Albert’s mention, we can now add Jeff Van Gundy coaching in an All-Star Game to the list of “things that only happened because Michael Jordan quit to play baseball for two years” list. He and Mike Fratello handled the color commentating duties.

Then the game started and MJ missed everything. Jumpers, layups. Woof.

Eventually he heated up (but in all fairness if I shot enough I’d heat up eventually…) and in the fourth quarter pulled off a couple of spectacular moves, including an up and under flip over two big guys for a layup.

We got to see Yao and Shaq play at the same time (big whup) and Stephon Marbury dribble the length of the court looking like a dog wiping his hiney on the carpet. We got to see Jason Kidd miss a three get the ball back, miss it again, get the long rebound and then finally make it and throw his hands up in the air, sarcastically. Kevin Garnett dunked on everybody. Tracy McGrady made you wonder why the East didn’t give him the ball every time. Isiah Thomas pissed off Paul Pierce, Antoine Walker and Zydrunas Ilgauskas by benching them for the entire second half. Oops! Pierce and ‘Toine might come back to haunt him. Big Z? Not so much.

Why was Brad Miller starting the second half?

I enjoyed the huddles at the end of regulation and the first overtime when you could tell that the East players were looking at the plays Isiah was drawing up and saying, “Shut up. We know you can’t coach.

They set Jordan up to win the game in regulation but he failed. They set him up at the end of the the first overtime and he made an incredible turn around on the baseline over Shawn Marion. But Jermaine O’Neal pulled a Craig Hodges and fouled Kobe on a three point try. Kobe made two of the three free throws and sent the game to double OT.

Then, incredibly, Thomas put stone cold Walker and Pierce back into the game. The West went on a huge run with Garnett doing most of the damage and the game was over.

Nicely played, Mr. Thomas. You moron.

And, in spite of all of the fun had by all this weekend in Atlanta, we’ll always have Mariah. Wow.

If you’re like me and your two favorite college basketball teams are Notre Dame and Illinois, you had a pretty good day even before Mariah turned the All-Star halftime into a softcore porn flick.

Illinois got off to a 17-1 lead over Ohio State and pantsed them on national TV. Brian Cook left the court to chants of “Player of the Year! Player of the Year!” and we were subjected to yet another shot of his mother in the stands. Make it stop. Please.

Notre Dame and Pitt got ABC’s big game treatment. The game was moved to 2:30 p.m. and Brent Musberger and Dick Vitale were sent to South Bend to crank up the hype machine.

For once, the game didn’t disappoint. Despite getting thrown all over the floor in the first half, Notre Dame finally showed some backbone in the second. Torin Francis finally realized that Pitt’s center, Onterrio Lett is fat and not very good, and Torin started to abuse him down the stretch. Chris Thomas and Torrian Jones forced supposed Pitt star Brandin Knight (who–I’m sorry, shoots like his brother, Brevin–not well) into missing his first eight shots.

Knight made a huge one, though to tie the game at 64 and set up heroics from Francis, but mainly from Notre Dame’s hero, Chris Thomas.

Thomas can be maddening at times. He has the talent to be the best point guard in the country (with perhaps the notable exception of Texas’ BJ Ford) and a lot of the time you see it. But sometimes, like in the first matchup with Pitt, Thomas goes into the tank.

Yesterday, he rose to the occasion. Notre Dame inbounded the ball without a time out after Knight’s game-tying three. Thomas dribbled the clock down to ten seconds and finally started his run. With Knight yapping in his face Thomas got to within about ten feet of the basket and went up for what would have been an awfully tough shot. But he saw Francis cutting across the lane, fired a perfect pass to Torin, who laid it in with the left hand (to the delight of basketball coaches all around the country) and Notre Dame was in first place in the absurdly named Big East West.

Pandelarium ensued (they could have been killed–or worse) on the court and in the postgame interview Thomas referred to Vitale as “Dickie V.” Not a bad day.

And so, for a day anyway, Illinois looked like a bona fide Final Four threat in the first half of their game and Notre Dame made their case in the second half of theirs.

Hey, a guy can dream. Can’t he?

Rick Morrissey says Notre Dame has all of the ingredients. If only…

Avani Patel on a Notre Dame game that ended three times.

Bill Self was happy for 25 minutes, and then…not so much.

MJ passed the torch last night. Let’s hope the new guys don’t just use it to light their bongs.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to praise MJ. For once.

Blah, blah, blah, Keith Foulke, blah, blah, blah.

Steve Stone thinks we’ve been too hard on Chip Caray. You haven’t seen anything yet, Chippy.

Mike Brey thinks that the fans might have ended the game early yesterday. And he’s fine with that.

David Huh on the sea of green that has crept across the street and into the Joyce Center.

Mark Tupper on yesterday’s romp over the Buckeyes.

I really wish that Peter Gammons wasn’t this high on the Cubs. It just makes me uneasy.

I think we’re all fascinated that Kobe has to change shoe companies every three games.

Don Banks is getting fired up about Jack Del Rio. Whatever.

Twenty seven million Americans watched Michael Jackson confirm his insanity on Thursday night. We love to gawk at this freak.

EW with five of Whacko Jacko’s most outlandish quotes. How did they narrow it down to five?

EW goes inside the Jimmy Kimmel Show.

Catherine Zeta Jones says that unauthorized photos ruined her wedding. I thought that marrying a guy older than her father (it’s true) did that.

Pepsi wants to give somebody a billion dollars. How about just making their pop taste better?

Yeah, does it really surprise anybody that the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” guy got busted with pot? I didn’t think so.

Isn’t this cute? Madonna thinks anybody cares what she thinks about anything. Awww.

Dave Matthews, too. Is South Africa invading Iraq? Well, then shut up, then.

The world’s greatest newspaper takes us inside a Wild Burqa contest. Woo!