February 20, 2022
For anyone who didn't watch Saturday night's Slam Dunk Contest — you didn't miss much.
For those unfortunate souls who stayed up for what is supposed to be the NBA's marquee event on their All-Star Saturday Night, we are sorry.
But if you are reading this, you care deeply about the Slam Dunk contest like we do, desperate for the glory days when the NBA's elite would put on a show. Every superstar from an era gone by, from Dr. J to MJ to Clyde Drexler, all the way through Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady and Dwight Howard passed through a dunk contest or two. More recent battles between Aaron Gordon and Zach LaVine were pretty entertaining as well.
But in recent years it's become kind of stale, boring and between no-name dunkers. The competition this year was won by New York's Obi Toppin, a career 5.3 points per game scorer. He bested a G leaguer in Jalen Green, a fellow 5-point-per-game guy Juan Toscano-Anderson and sophomore Cole Anthony. Many onlookers are suggesting that the three-point contest should be the new marquee event, with the dunk contest as one of the appetizers.
If you missed the event here its a condensed version. Even without all the misses and boring stuff it's still pretty lame.
But short of mandating that Ja Morant, Anthony Edwards or even Giannis Antetokoumpo participate (this would probably solve the problem), can the league do anything to salvage this vestige of an era gone by?
We've got a few suggestions NBA:
The best dunkers in the world might not be NBA players. They could be Real Hoopers. Check out these slams:
The NBA needs to bring in reinforcements. How about, expanding the slate of dunkers to eight, and making four of them street ballers. Have the street guys compete and the NBA guys compete, with the best of each bunch competing in the finals. Who wouldn't want to see that?
Back in 2014 the NBA had a one and done contest where dunkers faced off one vs. one. The competition in 2022 was so god awful, that any new format would help. Reintroducing a situation where athletes try and best one another straight up will get the crowd more into it and competitive juices flowing.
Let's combine our first suggestion and this one, having the four street dunkers and four NBA guys face-off 1-vs-1 until the top in each bracket remains.
And while we're at it, mandate the dunkers do something in an allowed amount of time, say one minute. Dunkers Saturday night were meticulous and boring, as they seemed to get endless attempts to maneuver a good alley oop. They technically had three attempts, but routinely Cole Anthony or Jalen Green took advantage of that rule taking what seemed like an eternity to get a dunk going. By the time they did, the excitement was long gone. The best thing about the dunk contest is the spontaneity of a perfect slam.
In our proposed bracket format, give the dunkers a time limit. If both participant miss their dunks, allow a re-do. Get some urgency back and require the ballers to have backup plans to their over the top attempts.
Perhaps there are just a finite number of ways to dunk a basketball and we are reaching a saturation point. But that's okay. There is a way to still make the contest exciting. Maybe have the dunkers do a dunk that falls into each category — a windmill round, a between the legs round, a tomahawk round, a hang time round, hell, even a prop round. See who can do the best in each category and that's your best dunker of the year.
Or another idea, have the slam dunkers face off head to head, but make them play some version of the classic shooting game where one guy does a 360 slam, the other has to match it and a judge decides whether the second guy pulled off the imitation attempt. This idea would help to eliminate the grind and boring event we have now, as each missed dunk would prompt the competitor to then take over and try one of their own.
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