The Dunk Contest

I thought I was reading The Onion this morning, when it described Griffin jumping over a car to the accompaniment of a gospel choir. It was the AP lede in my paper.

 

WFW, Shockey. All the theatrics seemed to come right out of WWE. But give me a move like when Jordan switched hands in the playoffs ... that's one to remember!

 

So here's what Griffin (or whoever) needs to do next year. Get nine of his buddies and have them stand around the court. Have one throw an alley-oop that he can do whatever with. Maybe we can even bring back Shawn Bradley for this.
That ought to satisfy the purists.

 

I think the problem now is more that the props add nothing to the dunks. If you're going to use a prop, use it correctly like McGee, Dwight Howard or even Gerald Green. The car and choir was just stupid.

I don't mind the repeated attempts for a dunk thing as much as others. If you don't let them have a bunch of attempts, then I think you see much less interesting dunks.

 

Kid definitely had a bad hair day.

 

Nevertheless, the Doc set the bar high.

 

That was fine. There's a huge difference between props like the two goals (or Howard's 12 foot goal) that enable someone to accomplish something physically innovative and new with the ACTUAL DUNK, and props like choirs and silly skits with kid actors that have nothing to do with the dunk itself.


Nobody had ever simultaneously dunked on two goals before, but plenty of guys have jumped as high and far as Griffin did on the car dunk, just that nobody bothered to stick a Kia underneath before. That's the difference, Griffin's prop didn't give us a new dunk, it just gave us something new underneath a dunk we've seen others before.

 

When I used to cover the McDonald's Game every year you would see better dunk contests than most of the NBA ones in the last decade.

 

fixed for truth

 

I don't mind props at all. It's for entertainment purposes. I think people are taking the dunk contest a bit too seriously. It's for fun, nothing more. I liked the kid act. The Griffin stuff was too much, maybe, but, eh, not completely horrible.

This year's dunk contest was as creative as I can remember in quite awhile. Everyone had something spectacular.

 

Until they start giving more than two points for it, to me, a dunk is just another shot.

 

They televise these at random times on ESPN every couple of months, and yeah, they're pretty awesome. All the top high school guys like Blake Griffin and LeBron James participate, and they throw down some pretty disgusting dunks.