Wilkins Wins It With the Same Old Stuff : Slam-dunk contest: Dominique beats Kenny Smith, but no one seems to care anymore. Hodges wins three-point shootout.

The NBA’s slam-dunk championship, looking more than ever like a competition that has outlived its entertainment value, wheezed to a conclusion Saturday night, with former champion Dominique Wilkins mercifully voted a return triumph.

A five-person panel provided him with a 146.8 to 145.1 victory over 6-foot-2 Sacramento King guard Kenny Smith, who did what he could to enliven a dull night with the solitary spark of originality.

Smith started by turning his back to the basket, bouncing the ball backward between his legs and off the backboard, then turning and grabbing it in the air and reverse dunking it.

However, the judges kept giving Wilkins 9s and 10s for graceful execution of his old standbys, perhaps just because he was Dominique, or because his friends, Cliff Levingston and John Salley, kept jumping around and leading cheers as if he’d done something spectacular.

Perhaps the competition would be better as a show, rather than something that is scored. The sellout crowd rose as soon as the last slam had been dunked and headed for the exits . . . without waiting to see who had won.

“I tell you,” Wilkins said later, “how many different dunks can you do? You have to think about that. We were very creative out there, and those dunks are hard.”

Men have jammed, reverse jammed, cuffed, tomahawked, windmilled, bounced balls off the floor off the board, jumped over chairs on the way in. No one has yet tried to bounce one off the scoreboard or the ceiling, but they’re running out of moves.

The crowd was subdued and the competitors noticed.

“The fan response wasn’t what I thought it would be,” said the Knicks’ dethroned defending champion, Kenny Walker. “Like Dominique said, there isn’t much more you can do.”

Ironically, this was the first time the NBA’s day of demonstrations had been moved to prime time, albeit cable TV prime time, with the dunk competition going on last, in the star spot.

“I just wanted to have fun,” Smith said. “If Mike Tyson got knocked out, I think maybe I could beat Dominique.” Smith might have won, but blew his last attempt, losing his balance and needing to hang onto the rim and barely getting the ball in.

Had Smith missed, he could have taken a mulligan, but the rules say that makes stand.

Nothing’s perfect, especially in the slam-dunk competition.

The three-point shootout started out as a potential duel between Larry Bird and Magic Jordan . . . and wound up a contest between Craig Hodges and Reggie Miller.

Hodges, the former Long Beach 49er and Clipper, now with the Bulls, beat ex-Bruin Miller, 19-18.

Neither Bird, who had never been beaten in this competition, nor Jordan, who had never entered, got out of the first round.

Jordan is making three-pointers at a 39.1% clip this season, but went five for 25.

Bird started nine for 15, but finished three for eight, and had two balls left in the rack when the buzzer sounded.

Getting old?

“Brain dead,” Bird said, laughing. “I don’t know what to think. I never had any trouble getting a shot up.”

Bird, a 40% career shooter of three-pointers, came in this season at an inglorious 29.2%. Whereas in the past he has warmed up by bragging and psyching out all competition, this time he kept quiet.

“He was really kind of quiet this time around,” Miller said. “Maybe, you know, he hasn’t been shooting the ball too well. He wasn’t really talking the way people say he has.”

As UCLA fans can attest, Miller began preparing for this competition as a freshman in the days of Larry Farmer, with a selection of shots that horrified observers.

Hodges won a tiebreaker 24-second shootout with the Miami Heat’s Jon Sundvold to gain the finals. Miller won the coin toss and had Hodges shoot first, hoping he was tired.

Hodges posted his 19, the second best round of the night to Hodges’ own 20.

Miller started slowly, then came on. If he had made his last shot, he would have won, but it hit the front rim, the back rim and skipped on its way.

“I could have been $10,000 richer,” Miller said.

In the Legends Classic, a jump shot with 17 seconds left by Cazzie Russell gave the East a 37-36 victory over the West.

The game proved that, aside from the color of the contestants’ hair and the size of their waists, little changes.

Elvin Hayes only shot it when he had it.

Calvin Murphy darted circles around everyone.

Rick Barry, the only contestant who has more hair than when he retired, made a hook, ran to the other end and yelled to his bench, laughing, “What do you have to do to get a foul in this league?”

When the West’s Dave Cowens missed a last shot and the rebound rolled out of bounds as the buzzer sounded, Barry complained that he had been fouled. He was serious this time. He raised his two arms in supplication.

Just like in the old days.