Okay i’m going to just come right out and say it……”That was the worst NBA Slam Dunk Contest i’ve ever seen!” And trust me I have all of them in perspective after watching NBA TV’s airing on Friday of every single NBA Slam Dunk Contest throughout history. I pulled the marathon. I saw them all. The 2009 contest just didn’t measure up.
Am I alone on this? Was no one else extremely disappointed at both the lack of great dunks and the obvious favoritism being shown by the judges towards Dwight Howard?
I’ll give Dwight Howard the hat tip on one of his dunks. The one where he threw it off the side of the backboard and showed some amazing athleticism to maintain ball control and hang time to float in for the vicious one hander. But all of his other dunks? Bo-ring….I almost fell asleep watching him lead up to the eventual dunk on the 12 foot rim…..yet 50’s every time from the judges?? What were they thinking?
All I can say is THANK GOD for the fan voting option on this one organized by Sprite. Thank you Sprite for that!
I think part of the problem with the dunk contest nowadays is that the dunkers are spending too much time trying to find innovative dunks and gimmicks and it’s become totally ‘tacky’. Personally, I still get off my seat when one of the dunkers just throws down a vicious bread and butter reverse, or a nice windmill with great hang time. That’s what it’s all about, right? For example, in my opinion the best dunk of the night was J.R. Smith’s first dunk where he did a self-pass, let it bounce TWICE, then he grabbed it for a ridiculous full windmill! What score did he receive? Only a 43!!! A 43 on the best dunk of the night! Wow….The real laugher about the scoring however was that Nate Robinson a few minutes later on his first dunk, did the exact identical dunk as Smith, but with only ONE bounce on the self-lob instead of the TWO bounces, yet he scored a 46!!! Sure Nate Robinson is shorter and has to get up a bit higher, but Smith’s was a lot more exciting because he jumped from further out, and had more hang time.
Rudy Fernandez also had two really nice dunks, sure the second one took a while to complete, but it certainly was one of the more difficult dunks of the competition when you look back on it. So J.R. Smith had the best dunk of the night on his first attempt, Rudy Fernandez the second best dunk of the night on his second dunk, yet they had the lowest scores of the evening and did not advance to the final round. Personally I think the judges were so jacked up to see what Dwight Howard would do to follow up his 2008 Superman Dunk, that J.R. and Rudy could have jumped to the roof of the arena, done two back flips on the way down, then dunked it….and they still wouldn’t have knocked out Dwight Howard.
Below i’ve included a video of what The Hoop Doctors discussed were the best dunks of the competition. There are two from Nate Robinson in the highlights, so I guess we would agree that he deserved to win based on the contest finals. But surely J.R. Smith deserved a chance to go against Nate Rob in the finals last night, instead of Dwight Howard’s first two boring dunks that helped him advance.
Before you check out the video below however, if you want to see THE REAL DUNK OF THE NIGHT check out this link to Derrick Rose throwing down a sick bread and butter reverse in the finale of the Skills Competition.
