NBA dunk-in between

[thedofd]

Derozan and Gordon. Check it out: NBA.com has the photos and names reversed. Nice.

http://www.nba.com/allstar2010/polls/dunkin/index.html?ls=iref:nbahpt1

 

[VF21]

Whaaaa???? I went to check another channel and came back and I'm confused. Is this the dunk competition? If so, I'm not impressed with the participants.

EDIT (in the words of the immortal Emily Latila): Oh, never mind...

 

[Aenadin]

still ticked off with lebron not in the slam dunk.. he pulled out

 

[PurpleHaze]

This years NBA all-star dunk competition looks to be pretty lame. Maybe it will exceed expectations and hopefully Gerald Wallace excels. How can little Nate Robinson possibly top last years kriptonite KO? Of well, I guess I'll watch it but the D-League All-Star game (on NBA-TV) before the competition will probably as or more interesting.

 

[Vlade4GM]

Could it possibly be worse than last year's dunk contest?

 

[PurpleHaze]

Could it possibly be worse than last year's dunk contest?

It's really gotten incredibly weak over the years. Only Superman a couple years ago was recent memorable like the days of exciting dunk champs Dr. J, Air Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, Vince Carter - even Brent Barry!

 

[Bricklayer]

You know, my memory may be faulty, but I really thought it started to take its big step back years ago when they began to allow guys as many chances as they needed to make a dunk. It leads to those incredibly ugly and boring 3,4,5 fails per one dunk sequences. And like I say, my memory may be faulty here, but I thought back in the olden days that was not how it worked.

 

[PurpleHaze]

My memory is a bit faulty too on that. Who can forget Chris 'The Birdman' Anderson a few years back making a virtual fool of himself with blow dunk after blown dunk. I think they instituted a quicker time clock (2 mins?) for dunker to get one down or else. Still, the lack of LeBron, D-Wade, Kobe (I think he's only been an entrant couple times in his long career) among few other "stars" has made it recently a bit anti-climatic. In that regard, the Horse competition and 3-point contest might be better viewing - we'll see.

 

[tradepeja]

They added the "Birdman" rule put in after 2005 that states that after your 2 minutes to dunk have elapsed, if you have not completed a dunk then you are allotted 2 additional attempts. If you fail to complete your dunk after those 2 attempts you score a 0.

And anyone else spit out their drink when Kenny Smith kept implying that Shannon Brown is a better athlete (ath-a-leet) than Gerald Wallace?

 

[Bricklayer]

They added the "Birdman" rule put in after 2005 that states that after your 2 minutes to dunk have elapsed, if you have not completed a dunk then you are allotted 2 additional attempts. If you fail to complete your dunk after those 2 attempts you score a 0.

And anyone else spit out their drink when Kenny Smith kept implying that Shannon Brown is a better athlete (ath-a-leet) than Gerald Wallace?

Yeah, I remember when they put it in. But thing is that I seem to remember, and I may be misremembering, but I seem to remember back in its heyday you only got like 2 or 3 chances. Or maybe not even that in Jordan's day. I woould imagine they loosened the rule to allow for people to attempt more difficult dunks, but in the process it has made the whole thing a borefest wiht 3 missed dunks per every made dunk and sometimes minutes of nothing.

 

[Superman]

And it takes away the thrill of seeing a dunk when you've already seen it tried and failed.

I still think the Vince Carter Show was the best dunk contest I've ever seen. I had trouble remembering that Steve Francis was the other guy there with him, and Francis had some sick dunks, too. That was pure entertainment. Whatever that crap was Saturday night was garbagio.

 

[GeraldWallace#3]

And it takes away the thrill of seeing a dunk when you've already seen it tried and failed.

I still think the Vince Carter Show was the best dunk contest I've ever seen. I had trouble remembering that Steve Francis was the other guy there with him, and Francis had some sick dunks, too. That was pure entertainment. Whatever that crap was Saturday night was garbagio.

It was VC T-Mac and Francis at the end.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Yeah, I remember when they put it in. But thing is that I seem to remember, and I may be misremembering, but I seem to remember back in its heyday you only got like 2 or 3 chances. Or maybe not even that in Jordan's day. I woould imagine they loosened the rule to allow for people to attempt more difficult dunks, but in the process it has made the whole thing a borefest wiht 3 missed dunks per every made dunk and sometimes minutes of nothing.

I think in its heyday it was 3 dunks per round and they dropped the low score. It may have gone to best of 2 in the final round.

If I were a judge and a dunker kept repeating the same dunk over and over until it was made I'd take a point off for each miss.

Maybe to fix it they could bring it back to basics. Have 5 or 6 classic dunks and have each contestant do their spin on it. The thing that was so impressive about Jordan's free throw dunk wasn't that he jumped from the free throw line, it was his grace in the air. Several people have repeated that dunk throughout the years and it came off looking like just another dunk because they had no style and grace but for some reason the conventional wisdom was "Oh, free throw line dunk, automatic 10". Rubbish.

Here's one idea for a pool of 8 contestants.

First round the contestants do 3 predetermined (before the contest) classic dunks in their own style. One redo will be allowed during this round but all 3 dunks count. Highest 4 combined scores advance.

Second round 4 contestants spin a wheel to decide their two dunks. Drop the low scores, highest 2 scores advance to the final.

Final round is the top 2 contestants, dunkers can do any dunk they want, 2 dunk attempts, highest score wins.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Here's one idea for a pool of 8 contestants.

First round the contestants do 3 predetermined (before the contest) classic dunks in their own style.

Wasn't that what made Gerald Wallace vow never to do the dunk competition again? There was a classic dunk re-creation, and he totally nailed a not-super-spectacular Dr. J. dunk, while his opponent (forget who) ignored the dunk he was supposed to recreate, did something showy, and won anyways?

I always thought that was a shame. And I was kind of surprised that Gerald actually decided to come back, though given his apparent lack of interest during the actual contest, he may have been thumbing his nose at the whole thing.

 

[DocHolliday]

This years dunk contest was, in a word, laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame!!!


Yes, that was all one word.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Wasn't that what made Gerald Wallace vow never to do the dunk competition again? There was a classic dunk re-creation, and he totally nailed a not-super-spectacular Dr. J. dunk, while his opponent (forget who) ignored the dunk he was supposed to recreate, did something showy, and won anyways?

Gerald Wallace lost because he did a safe dunk and thought he could re-do it make or miss when the rule only allowed a redo on a miss.

I know they experimented with classic dunks in the past but I think they a) took it too literally and b) didn't communicate properly to the judges.

This would be more like a classic element ie. "Reverse", "Windmill" or "Tomahawk", then everyone could tweak it with their own flavor, whether that be rotations, under the legs, raw power, hangtime, double clutch, whatever.

 

[Superman]

Gerald Wallace lost because he did a safe dunk and thought he could re-do it make or miss when the rule only allowed a redo on a miss.

I know they experimented with classic dunks in the past but I think they a) took it too literally and b) didn't communicate properly to the judges.

This would be more like a classic element ie. "Reverse", "Windmill" or "Tomahawk", then everyone could tweak it with their own flavor, whether that be rotations, under the legs, raw power, hangtime, double clutch, whatever.

I like the Classic idea. I don't think there's too much out there in the way of new dunks, anyways. Give them some creative license, but let's see if you can do what the greats have done.

I don't like the Wheel of Dunk. They did that a few years back, and it was horrible. I'd like to see a "Get Under" feature. You know, when you're playing in the backyard, and someone says you can't dunk on them, and you say "Get under", and the whole game stops while you try to dunk on each other for the next ten minutes? We broke a ton of rims like that. It'll never happen, but that's what I want to see. I want to see the best dunkers in the NBA dunking on each other.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I think the wheel of dunk was too specific when they tried it. If it just had between 4-6 dunk styles it might work. I'm not a fan of figure skating but since its olympic time right now I'll just use that as an example, all the routines are totally unique but they all require certain elements to be thrown in.

Alternatively instead of dunk styles they could have 3 dunks, 1 each from a specific spot on the floor, one from the left side, one right and one straight on.

I've never been a big fan of the stupid bounce the ball high in the air type of dunks which seem to have really taken over the past few years.

I do like the "get under" idea, or just anything that made it more of a game time type of dunk.

 

[Bricklayer]

I don't like the Wheel of Dunk. They did that a few years back, and it was horrible. I'd like to see a "Get Under" feature. You know, when you're playing in the backyard, and someone says you can't dunk on them, and you say "Get under", and the whole game stops while you try to dunk on each other for the next ten minutes? We broke a ton of rims like that. It'll never happen, but that's what I want to see. I want to see the best dunkers in the NBA dunking on each other.

Amusing as it might be probably too much risk of injury there for an All Star event though. Maybe you could get some scrubbies desperate for the attention, but I would think the major players might all beheld out by their teams/agents/they themselves.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

The only way that the Wheel of Dunk could possibly work is if every player was capable of doing all of the dunks on the wheel. Steve Francis, whom I can't stand, was totally screwed in that dunk contest because he got stuck having to do a dunk that he wasn't physically capable of doing, because his hands weren't big enough to palm a basketball.

:: is strongly against bringing back the Wheel of Dunk ::

 

[pdxKingsFan]

To be clear I am suggesting that a wheel would be basic stuff that anyone worthy of the contest can do, it would be highlighting the ability to improvise that basic dunk into something "wow" worthy.