Dan is a writer living in Shanghai, China.
February 17 08
Dwight Howard: Wow
That was the best NBA Slam Dunk contest I have seen in a long, long time. Creativity is back. And Dwight Howard is a monster. Just amazing.
When people, years ago, were calling for the dunk competition to be discontinued, I didn't protest. I started watching these things from the beginning — Jordan, Nique, Spud, Dee (dare I say Minor?) — and for the past decade or so it felt like dunkers had run out of new material. We had seen it all before. Contestants were just riffing on styles someone else originated. The show had gotten boring.
But all that has changed. Each one of 2008 champion Dwight Howard's dunks was something we hadn't seen before, and they were performed with style and panache. This guy is 6-foot-11, people.
Howard set the bar amazingly high with his first dunk. Ball thrown off the back of the backboard. He catches in midair, reaches his arm back under the backboard and slams it home ... somehow managing not to bounce his head off the back of the backboard, as well. This is almost the dunk I have been begging for for years. The version I always thought would be a sure 50 has the dunker starting behind the backboard, like Howard did, but instead of tossing the ball off the back of the backboard, he'd tap it off the back of the backboard while in the air — the ball doesn't leave his hands — and then, remaining in the air, he'd make his way under the backboard to complete the dunk. Seeing what Howard did last night, I now believe this is definitely possible.
Howard followed with his soon-to-be-famous Superman Dunk1. And this was just the first round. Ridiculous. He basically had the thing won right there, but came back with two more dunks we'd never seen before in the final round: one where he tosses the ball off the floor and the backboard, and then another which utilized a miniature basketball hoop attached to the backboard with suction cups.
While Howard, who according to TNT's announcers now owns at least two of the top 5 dunks ever in the contest, definitely stole the show, Gerald Green scored creativity points for his "birthday cake" dunk and Jamario Moon was also impressive (but screwed himself with a piece of athletic tape).
ESPN highlights of the contest are embedded below. More photos can be found here. Watch Howard practicing his dunks here.
If you have a chance to watch the 2008 Slam Dunk Contest in its entirety, please do so. It really was a throwback to the classic contests of yesteryear — the ones I'd get all excited about as a kid. Bliss (and the dogs) can confirm that this one had me screaming like a teenager all over again.
Hell, maybe now I'll actually watch an NBA game or two this year.
1 Is it still a "dunk" if the guy doesn't touch the rim and instead, so high in the air, throws the ball DOWN through the cylinder?
Comments (1)
Didn't watch this (and could have - I was home sick on the couch) and kind of regretting that I didn't. I knew it was good when my brother texted me at one point and said "Did you see that dunk?" Like you, I remember being so into the dunk contests when I was younger.
Andre Iguodala did the "bounce off the back of the rim" dunk last year. Howard said that he got the idea from him. Howard's was nice, but see if you can find footage of Iguodala's because I think it's better. I remember jumping out of my chair when he did it.
Posted on 02.20.08 at 04:56:31