If 2008's NBA All-Star festivities will be remembered for anything, it will likely be Gerald Green's birthday cake dunk, or Dwight Howard's leaping, soaring Superman routine, even if Howard's had two dunks that were far more impressive. His performance was terrific, Green's was underrated, and it was a dunk contest to remember in a variety of ways.

Recalling 2007's All-Star Weekend would probably lead one to a different sort of recollection, one of turmoil and race politics and violence. Columnist after columnist, from Jason Whitlock to Bill Simmons (but not Scoop Jackson!) decried the atmosphere. The 'smell of weed in the air,' the uneasy feeling walking from one casino to another — these were the hallmarks of last year's All-Star writing. They probably aren't fair (a group of pasty white suburban sportswriters should never be charged with the meaning of 'unsafe'), but they stuck all the same.

It's refreshing, then, that the overriding off-court theme from this year's trip to New Orleans is not a chaotic Act II to last year's melee, but a story seemingly of service and redemption and genuine attempts to help the city's downtrodden poor. Everywhere you turned on TNT this weekend another NBA All-Star was helping to paint a school, or build a church, or move someone out of a FEMA trailer. Charles Barkley was partying, sure, but his party was joint charity event with Shaquille O'Neal, hardly decadence for its own sake.

I understand that believing this requires a leap of faith on my part. This is obviously beneficial to the league, having the average viewer at home assume that all was well on the streets, that all the parties were charity events, that every trip down the wrong alley was aimed at fixing up a home. It requires a time-out from cynicism, and a little disbelief. Maybe things were rough this year, and like so many neighborhoods just outside the New Orleans downtown, were ignored as a matter of convenience.

But by a shee...

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