This Son Really Knows How to Rise as Barry Shows the NBA His Stuff

He came, he passed, he dunked. By the end of All-Star Saturday, there weren’t many NBA fans left who didn’t know who Brent Barry was.

The young pride of the Clippers woke up the Alamodome crowd with his Magic Johnson passes in the rookie game, then won the dunk contest, taking off at the free-throw line to jam, a trick done in competition by two players before him--Julius Erving and Michael Jordan.

Like Erving and Jordan, Barry’s heel came down on the line. Barry did his dunk twice, bringing down the house both times, getting 49 of a possible 50 points on the second from the judges, including Erving, to win the competition.

“I think Julius was probably the one who stiffed me on that last point,” said Barry, grinning. “He did it way back when. He would probably have given himself a 50.”

Yes, Barry talked too, happily running his mouth on every subject that came up.

On wearing his warmup jacket while dunking: “I don’t have much of a body.”

On the name of his new shoe: “Air Bones?”

On the best dunker in the family: “It certainly wasn’t my father. C’mon.”

On his chances of winning: “I don’t think anyone from the office pools put much money on me. Those that did, congratulations. Those that didn’t, too bad.”

On being the third white player ever to enter the contest: “That’s kind of a touchy issue. I was going to get up a T-shirt that said, ‘White man can jump,’ but I didn’t want to burst anyone’s bubble.”

Barry had six points and several oohs from the crowd at halftime of the rookie game but flamed out in the second half. After zinging some teammates such as Kevin Garnett in the interview room--”It’s funny Schick sponsors this game and Kevin can’t shave yet”--he joined the dunk contestants.

When he retreated the length of the floor in the first round, then ran up, jumped from the free-throw line and dunked, fans and players alike went wild.

When he was getting ready to do his second dunk, the players on the bench--”the thousand-dollar suit section,” Barry called them--started yelling at him to take off from the free-throw line again. When he retreated to the other end of the floor again, they all rose and started waving for the crowd to get to its feet. When Barry made the dunk, the contest was his.

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Tim Legler, a Washington Bullet reserve whose wife, Jennifer, had labor induced to deliver their first child nine days ago so her husband could be here this weekend, won the three-point contest, beating Orlando’s Dennis Scott in the finals, 20-14.

Legler, who leads the league in three-point shooting (51.3%), had the three highest scores of the night, 23, 22 and 20.

The Bullets’ Rasheed Wallace made a 12-footer in the closing seconds to give the East a 94-92 victory in the rookie game.

Toronto’s Damon Stoudamire scored 19 points with 11 assists and was voted the most valuable player.

Demetrius Houston, a 17-year-old from Ft. Pierce, Fla., missed a three-point shot for $1 million. “A little drop of sweat dropped into my eye and took my concentration off,” he said.