ALL STAR WEEKEND NOTEBOOK: NO DUNKS LEAVE GARDEN IN FUNK.

Byline: Associated Press

If Dunk-Free Saturday had opened on Broadway, the drama critics would have been breaking out their sledgehammers.

The NBA's annual All-Star eve gimmickfest went over like a lead balloon Saturday night, playing to a sellout crowd so non-transfixed that thousands - despite paying $100 per ticket - left early.

``They should have had the slam-dunk contest,'' said Spike Lee, an avid Knicks fan and courtside regular at Madison Square Garden.

Instead, the crowd sat silently through the debut of 2ball, a shooting skills contest won by Clyde Drexler of the Houston Rockets and Cynthia Cooper of the Houston Comets.

The buzz didn't build during the rookie game, either, which was won 85-80 by the East as Zydrunas Ilgauskas of the Cleveland Cavaliers won the Most Valuable Player award.

And the fans - or what remained of them - were lingering at the exit ramps as the 3-point shootout went down to the final round and Jeff Hornacek of the Utah Jazz defeated Hubert Davis of the Dallas Mavericks.

``I know they wanted to give publicity to the WNBA, but they could have kept the slam-dunk as part of it. I think the players really wanted to have a dunk contest,'' Lee said.

At least the evening wasn't totally non-jammin.

Ilgauskas had four dunks during the rookie game on his way to scoring 18 points, Tracy McGrady of Toronto, at 18 the youngest player in the league, had a spectacular windmill jam to start his string of three straight stuffs and Bobby Jackson of Denver was the hands-down winner of Dunk of the Night for catching an alley-oop pass from Rodrick Rhodes off the backboard and - despite being 6-foot-1 - going big-time airborne for a windmill finish that may have been the individual highlight of the night.

Drug talk: Marijuana use in the NBA took up the most time at the players' association meeting. The league has proposed adding marijuana to its list of banned substances. The union opposes it.

While he wasn't ready to make a counterproposal to the league, union director Billy Hunter left the door open for a compromise.

``Our concern is that the league doesn't use marijuana as just another vehicle to constrain and control our players,'' Hunter said.