Robinson soars past Howard

Call him Krypto-Nate.

Nate Robinson tugged on Superman’s cape – and won.

The diminutive New York Knicks guard beat defending champion Dwight Howard of Orlando in an electrifying slam dunk contest Saturday night in Phoenix, winning 52 percent of fans’ votes.

Clad in an all-green Knicks uniform with green shoes, Robinson used Howard as a prop in the final round, springboarding over the 6-foot-11 center to jam.

“Dwight was a great sport letting me dunk over him,” said the 5-9 Robinson, who also won in 2006.

Howard, who scored a perfect 50 on both of his first-round dunks, performed the most theatrical dunk of the night in the first round.

He disappeared into a phone booth just off the court, emerging with a Superman cape.

Howard waved his arms to the crowd as an 11-foot basket was wheeled onto the floor. Howard took a bounce pass from teammate Jameer Nelson and tomahawked a dunk as U.S. Airways Center crowd exploded in cheers.

Robinson had fired up fans by leaping off the back of teammate Wilson Chandler, who crouched on all fours in the lane, and jamming, drawing applause from longtime Knicks fan Spike Lee.

“I got the championship back to New York City,” Robinson said.

Portland’s Rudy Fernandez and Denver’s J.R. Smith were eliminated in the first round.

Earlier, Miami’s Daequan Cook connected over and over again when the 3-Point Shootout went to an extra session.

When the long-distance contest went to overtime, Cook found his stroke.

The Heat guard posted the best total of the competition with 19 points in the extra round, cruising past Orlando’s Rashard Lewis to win the title and end Jason Kapono’s two-year run as king of one of All-Star Saturday’s marquee events.

Lewis sputtered in the third session, missing his first 11 shots to finish with seven points.

Sunnier times in Phoenix

For one weekend, basketball promised to be fun again in Phoenix.

The NBA’s best were in town for the All-Star game, bringing the spectacle of endless entertainment, lots of laughs and plenty of points. Just like the Suns used to provide.

Now, with the hometown team mired in so much misery that its own All-Star starter was perhaps days away from a ticket out of town, it was up to Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James and the other high-scoring showmen to bring hoops happiness back to the Valley of the Sun.

“Right now, the dynamics with the Phoenix Suns, there is a lot of head-scratching going on right now,” said Doug Collins, a Phoenix resident who will be part of TNT’s coverage of the game tonight.

“This team was the darling of the city for the last four years with Mike D’Antoni – high-flying and (they) had a wide-open style. There have been a lot of trades and changes, and I think they have more meetings in the last month than I have in my career trying to get things squared away, which is always a bad sign.”

The Suns were championship contenders during most of D’Antoni’s four full seasons, winning games and fans with their up-tempo brand of offense. He’s gone now, and he might not be the only one by next week as the disappointing Suns look to start over while barely hanging on at the bottom of the playoff race.

Amare Stoudemire, scheduled to start for the Western Conference, is perhaps the biggest and most frequent name mentioned in trade talks ahead of next week’s deadline. Teammate O’Neal, back in the All-Star game after missing out last year, also is on the block.

The potential dismantling of the local team threatened to overshadow the NBA’s third trip to Phoenix for its midseason event.