Ceballos’ Dunking Victory: Out of Sight : Contest: Former CS Fullerton standout makes shot blindfolded to defeat Hornets’ Johnson.

ORLANDO, Fla. —  Not even Cedric Ceballos dared say that he could win the NBA’s annual slam dunk contest blindfolded.

But he did anyway.

Ceballos made the last dunk of Saturday night one of the best ever in the popular competition, sprinting three-fourths of the court wearing a blindfold and dunking for a perfect score of 50 and the $20,000 first-place prize.

Ceballos, from the Phoenix Suns by way of Cal State Fullerton and Ventura College, would have won anyway because Larry Johnson, the other finalist, missed his final attempt. But this wasn’t bad for a closer.

“That blindfold--we’ve got to check it out,” Johnson said, smiling. “Where did he get it from? His back pocket?”

Ceballos actually hid it under his bicycle pants until needed and promised it was no trick piece of black cloth. He said he saw Magic Johnson covering his eyes with one hand while shooting four hours before a Laker-Sun game this season at the Forum. And when Johnson asked what plans Ceballos had for the dunk contest, an idea was born.

Ceballos, who named the slam “Hocus Pocus,” sometimes crashed into the basket support in the early days of experimentation and once ran into a camera placed there to record another attempt.

At Orlando Arena, before a capacity crowd and a national television audience, he paced back 20 steps from the take-off point, turned to face the basket and had Phoenix teammate Dan Majerle tie on the blindfold.

Ceballos told Johnson, watching courtside, what was about to happen. Majerle’s advice was not to run into the cameras. Somewhere, Sun Coach Cotton Fitzsimmons might have been saying something else.

“He was thinking about the second half of the season and the playoffs and wondering if he would have one less player,” Ceballos said.

Craig Hodges of the Chicago Bulls edged Jim Les of the Sacramento Kings to win his third consecutive three-point shootout and join Larry Bird as the only three-time winners.

Les, the league’s three-point champion last season but struggling in 1991-92, had a chance to win, but he missed six of his final seven attempts during the championship round.

It cost him $10,000, the difference between first and second place. Hodges got $20,000.

“I read how earlier in the season Larry Bird said, ‘Well, he may have hit 19 in a row (during the contest last year), but I still see him at the end of the bench,” said Hodges, a Cal State Long Beach product. “So I wanted this. I was ready.”

Les had his his own motivation, namely recognition.

“I hope so,” he said when asked if this will help. “I’ve been getting ID’d and checked all around here this weekend.”

The East beat the West, 46-38, in a Legends game tainted by leg injuries to Norm Nixon and David Thompson, both of which might require surgery.

Nixon, the former Laker and Clipper guard, said he heard a pop from around his knee when he suffered a ruptured tendon in his right quadriceps. After operations to repair separate knee and Achilles’ tendon injuries hampered him in the final years of his career, Nixon might need surgery again.

Thompson suffered a ruptured tendon in his left knee and, like Nixon, was taken off the court on a stretcher.

“We had a little discussion on the bench,” said Dave Bing of the East. “Not so much on who’s going to win or lose the game, but who’s going to be able to walk away.”

All-Star Notes

Magic Johnson got a 40-second standing ovation, longer and louder than anyone, when players for today’s game were introduced to fans. . . . The NBA, acting on a recommendation Saturday from team physicians, will stop games for the treatment of any injury “where there is a significant chance of infection.” Trainers, physicians and equipment managers will use gloves and other precautions when contact with blood is necessary.