<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Strong words about bringing the 2009 NBA All-Star Game to Phoenix are about to be turned into action. Suns Chairman Jerry Colangelo said the team officially would apply to host the 2009 festivities after he returns from an upcoming trip to China with Ski Austin, NBA executive vice president for events and attractions, like All-Star weekend. He already had said in the past two years that Phoenix would be a viable city to follow New Orleans' 2008 All-Star turn because of US Airways Center's renovation, the Phoenix Convention Center expansion and the addition of light rail and a downtown hotel. Phoenix hosted the 1975 and 1995 All-Star Games. "I am presently still talking to the league people about that," Colangelo said. "Very soon, there will be an application. . . . I would love to show what we have and all the work that has been done for the resurrection of downtown Phoenix. "Why not us?"</div> SOURCE I was in 8th grade in 1995 and had a blast during All-Star weekend, I got to go to the "Stay in School" celebrations at AWA, met a bunch of players, got all kinds of freebies, it was awesome. Barkley and Majerle were All-Stars that year, the game was pretty good from what I remember. So it should be really cool for kids around Arizona if we do get it. However All-Star weekend is worthless now days, I feel bad for those of you too young to remember the good days when the Dunk Contest mattered and actually had All-Stars and original dunks. The game featured players who deserved to be there and they actually played instead of finding ways to pull out. The days when Malone, Stockton, Rice, and Pippen won MVPs because they deserved it, not because the other team gave them wide open dunks. Since the casual fans took it over, I've lost interest in it, I still watch hoping maybe that spark will come back, but it doesn't. If the weekend were truely for "the fans" like some claim, then it would be for me, because I'm a true fan of the NBA; the people who it is targetted towards aren't fans at all.
