Monday, February 27

NBA Dunk Contest Highlights

And by highlights, we mean the seven minutes or so of actual success. Of course, this year's contest was stupidly judged by the fans, who texted in the winner. But, on a positive note, Iman Shumpert pulled out of the contest due to injury, which meant we didn't have to deal with the Linsanity that would have surely come when Jeremy Lin made a pass on one of the mandated "teammate-assisted dunks." Fortunately, we were spared that, and instead, Utah's Jeremy Evans made the cut, and probably made one of the Top 10 dunks in Dunk Contest history. Here's a breakdown of each player's best dunk, which conveniently enough all happened in a row, starting with eventual champion Evans' double ball slam at 3:04 in the below video.

Jeremy Evans Double Ball Slam - As I alluded to before, this dunk is INSANE. Evans benefits from having super long orangutan-style arms, but this dunk is still very difficult. He catches TWO balls that are thrown from teammate Gordon Hayward AS he's JUMPING OVER Hayward, and puts both of them through the hoop successfully. Very impressive. This jam probably won him the tournament.

Paul George's Glow-in-the-Dunk - I wish I could say I came up with that term, but I think George did it himself. In any case, this is one of those "gimmick" dunks, but unlike most of the other ones, the slam itself was pretty impressive. Hearkening back to Vince Carter's 2000 windmill dunk, George turns the lights off so he can really shine. Or something like that.

Derrick Williams Side o' the Backboard - I've seen this dunk before in a dunk contest, and I know that because I've used it when playing H-O-R-S-E since. It's also been done much better by Andre Iguodala. But I like this one mainly because Ricky Rubio is smiling like a South Park character while he's throwing the alley-oop. And it's still a fairly impressive dunk, even if it's been done before.

Chase Budinger's Actually Blindfolded (?) Dunk - Remember Cedric Ceballos's dunk in the 1992 Dunk Contest? Where it was fairly obvious he could see through that blindfold? Well, Chase Budinger paid him a tribute 20 years later with this dunk. What you don't see in this highlight video is that Budinger actually did fail on his first attempt, which may have just been a cute way to say "Hey, I can't really see!" when he still could, but I'll believe that he actually did it blindly. So kudos to you, Mr. Budinger.

Of course, none of these dunks surpass possibly the greatest dunk ever.

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