So we now have the, uh, five competitors for the dunk contest. We got defending champ Nate Robinson, Gerald Wallace (competed in 2002 against Jason Richardson), and Shannon Brown (EVERYONE in L.A. wanted him in) penciled in... while two more, DeMar DeRozan and Eric Gordon, are going to have a dunk-in during halftime of the Rookie/Sophomore game. As expected, no LeBron James.
THIS SEEMED LIKE A LOSE-LOSE BY LeBRON
Wow, LeBron. Way to man up. You got everyone's attention during the 2009 Dunk Contest. The bright lights of Cowboys Stadium (which could fill up 100,000 people) sounded irresistible. You got everyone excited. But, after a series of moves that kinda hit your credibility, we pretty much knew you were gonna pull out.
If you lost, maybe you would've felt embarrassed. So you decided to not live up to your word and not compete, which is even worse, in my opinion.
Come on, LeBron. Michael Jordan lost a slam dunk contest (1985). Why did you tell everyone in front of a national audience that you were going to compete then? Just to get everyone's attention? Well, you could've gotten more attention by competing in the dunk contest. Now that you backed out, you got attention, all right. Negative attention.
It's hard to really like you these days, LeBron. And you know what? You could've been the favorite had you competed. You're that great of an athlete. You can easily dunk from the freethrow line in a GAME.
Plus you could've gotten more stars to compete had you joined... and more fans could've watched.
Way to be the face of the NBA, LeBron.
Anyway, I'm going to pay attention to the dunk competitors. They definitely deserve MY attention.
Hmmmmm. Eric Gordon.
Gordon has deceiving hops. According to David Diep, he has a 40-inch vertical. Definitely impressive. I tried to dig up some videos of Eric Gordon and this is... the best I came up with? I'm probably not trying hard enough.
Eric is not afraid to dunk in a game. He'll have a nice right-handed jam once in a while but beyond that, I haven't seen anything. Maybe he'll be creative like a former Clipper who was once a dunk champion, Brent Barry.
DeMar DeRozan is my pick. The guy is just explosive.
He has a variety of dunks in his arsenal (including the Dwight Howard-esque bounce-the-ball-off-the-backboard-while-in-the-air-then-catch-with-one-handed-jam... that's the best way I can describe it). He's definitely the most impressive from what I can see.
Now Gerald Wallace competed eight years ago. He was okay from what I saw though he may have been handcuffed a little bit by that stupid, stupid dunk wheel (where the dunker had to emulate a classic contest dunk) in the 2002 Dunk Contest. Plus, he was only 19. Maybe he has more hops and creativity now?
Because his '02 performance won't be good enough to win in any other year, let alone 2010.
Now everyone's excited about Shannon Brown. Like Eric Gordon, all he has showed in games have been over-the-top one-handed dunks but I do believe Shannon has more hops than Gordon. However, is he dunk contest material?
Sure, that 360 was pretty but he's going to have to come up with more than that. Again, maybe age has made them wiser. And, of course, better leapers. Ha ha.
Now we all know what Nate Robinson can do. It's impressive that, at 5'8", he can even dunk, PERIOD.
Of course, he takes like 12 attempts to do a dunk. Plus we've possibly seen everything from Kryptonate. For all our sakes, let's hope not.
No matter what we think of the Dunk Contest, this is always a fun event. I'm hoping to get good showings from everyone. Sure, in the back of my mind, we'll think of the "what could have been"... but once the contest starts, it's all gravy. I can't wait for this contest.
There's one thing, though. Can we please get rid of the total fan vote in the Dunk Contest Finals? It takes way too long.
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