One of the best things about NBA All-Star weekend is the dunk contest.
It's true that recent editions of this contest has lacked the excitement and buzz that it used to when the likes of Air Jordan, Dominique Wilkins and Spud Webb were throwing down jams. The contest was revived a little thanks to another true dunk master: Vince Carter. But since Carter there hasn't been many memorable dunk contests. Which is a shame because these young competitors are raising the bar for creative and challenging dunks with each passing year. But still, who can name one of these players? That's the main problem, there aren't any big stars competing any more.
But with All-Star weekend in Vegas this year, the dunk contest was primed to be one of the best ever. And while some of the dunks in the championship round failed to be great, this year's battle of the dunk artists was still one of the more entertaining events in a while.
The actually dunkers may not have been household names, but a star-studded cast of judges made up for that. Jordan, Dr. J, Carter and Kobe were just a hand full of dunking maestros that were now judging their successors.
The dunkers that stood out the most for me were: defending champion Nate Robinson (who still needs to grow a few inches to be able to ride a roller coaster), Dwight Howard (who was by far, the biggest star in this year's contest) and high-flying Celtic Gerald Green.
For time considerations, I'll skip ahead to the top dunks of the night. First off, there was Dwight Howard's "sticker" dunk where he leaped up and tagged the top of the backboard with an ingenious sticker that depicted his smiling mug. At the same time he layed down a furious dunk. Now, I want to know two things: how do you get a sticker of your own face (because I would like to purchase several Scott Pukos stickers) and why did the judges give this dunk such a low score. You would think it was Dwight Schrute dunking not Howard with that low score.
Next there was Nate Robinson's cadre of dunks. He one last year, but to me it was tainted by the fact that his cool dunk took about 50 tries and an hour to finally get down. He should have got marked down for boring an entire arena and National Audience. Still, Robinson's a crowd favorite because of his small stature and epic leaping ability. Seriously, if I could jump as high as this man than I would jump or skip everywhere I went instead of walking. I would jump over little children in the street just for fun. Leaping ability like this is usually only scene in video games like NBA Jam and Super Mario (and if Robinson is Mario than that would make Gerald Green Luigi). Unfortunately, Robinson's downfall was that he took too many tries to produce his final dunk. Which opened the door for the 2007 dunking king.....
Gerald Green. Green had several jaw-dropping slams including the leaping over a table to receive a perfect score of 50 from the judges. The funniest moment of the night came on one his better dunks. Green's teammate Paul Pierce brought out a card-board cutout of Robinson for Green to dunk over. But instead Robinson stormed on the court and demanded that Green dunk over his real self instead of his cardboard counterpart. Green successfully hurdled Robinson and completed the dunk to a mixed reaction from a crowd that was both exhilarated by the dunk and also secretly disappointed that Green didn't end up kicking Robinson in the face (which he almost did).
Green was a deserving winner and he helped bring back the buzz for what is really a cool and unique event. But on another, more disturbing note, what was up with the Spurs mascot? I have no idea why there mascot is a giant coyote wearing a Tim Duncan jersey, but his bulbous and bulging green eyes are creepy. How does this mascot not frighten children and single handily bring down the Spurs home attendance. Or maybe their mascot isn't just a normal coyote, but a rabies-infested creature that resides in Texas. Yeah, maybe that's it.
On another note, be sure to check out the new edition of the Courier on Wednesday and check out my column Riding the Pine, it's all about the Buffalo Sabres and judging by the number of slug hats I've seen on campus, pretty much everyone should be interested in reading about hockey's finest.
It's true that recent editions of this contest has lacked the excitement and buzz that it used to when the likes of Air Jordan, Dominique Wilkins and Spud Webb were throwing down jams. The contest was revived a little thanks to another true dunk master: Vince Carter. But since Carter there hasn't been many memorable dunk contests. Which is a shame because these young competitors are raising the bar for creative and challenging dunks with each passing year. But still, who can name one of these players? That's the main problem, there aren't any big stars competing any more.
But with All-Star weekend in Vegas this year, the dunk contest was primed to be one of the best ever. And while some of the dunks in the championship round failed to be great, this year's battle of the dunk artists was still one of the more entertaining events in a while.
The actually dunkers may not have been household names, but a star-studded cast of judges made up for that. Jordan, Dr. J, Carter and Kobe were just a hand full of dunking maestros that were now judging their successors.
The dunkers that stood out the most for me were: defending champion Nate Robinson (who still needs to grow a few inches to be able to ride a roller coaster), Dwight Howard (who was by far, the biggest star in this year's contest) and high-flying Celtic Gerald Green.
For time considerations, I'll skip ahead to the top dunks of the night. First off, there was Dwight Howard's "sticker" dunk where he leaped up and tagged the top of the backboard with an ingenious sticker that depicted his smiling mug. At the same time he layed down a furious dunk. Now, I want to know two things: how do you get a sticker of your own face (because I would like to purchase several Scott Pukos stickers) and why did the judges give this dunk such a low score. You would think it was Dwight Schrute dunking not Howard with that low score.
Next there was Nate Robinson's cadre of dunks. He one last year, but to me it was tainted by the fact that his cool dunk took about 50 tries and an hour to finally get down. He should have got marked down for boring an entire arena and National Audience. Still, Robinson's a crowd favorite because of his small stature and epic leaping ability. Seriously, if I could jump as high as this man than I would jump or skip everywhere I went instead of walking. I would jump over little children in the street just for fun. Leaping ability like this is usually only scene in video games like NBA Jam and Super Mario (and if Robinson is Mario than that would make Gerald Green Luigi). Unfortunately, Robinson's downfall was that he took too many tries to produce his final dunk. Which opened the door for the 2007 dunking king.....
Gerald Green. Green had several jaw-dropping slams including the leaping over a table to receive a perfect score of 50 from the judges. The funniest moment of the night came on one his better dunks. Green's teammate Paul Pierce brought out a card-board cutout of Robinson for Green to dunk over. But instead Robinson stormed on the court and demanded that Green dunk over his real self instead of his cardboard counterpart. Green successfully hurdled Robinson and completed the dunk to a mixed reaction from a crowd that was both exhilarated by the dunk and also secretly disappointed that Green didn't end up kicking Robinson in the face (which he almost did).
Green was a deserving winner and he helped bring back the buzz for what is really a cool and unique event. But on another, more disturbing note, what was up with the Spurs mascot? I have no idea why there mascot is a giant coyote wearing a Tim Duncan jersey, but his bulbous and bulging green eyes are creepy. How does this mascot not frighten children and single handily bring down the Spurs home attendance. Or maybe their mascot isn't just a normal coyote, but a rabies-infested creature that resides in Texas. Yeah, maybe that's it.
On another note, be sure to check out the new edition of the Courier on Wednesday and check out my column Riding the Pine, it's all about the Buffalo Sabres and judging by the number of slug hats I've seen on campus, pretty much everyone should be interested in reading about hockey's finest.
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