Last night, Blake Griffin took home the Slam Dunk Contest trophy for All-Star Weekend 2011 in LA. Here's the run-down on how he did it....
I was watching this, and while Blake Griffin clearly dominated this contest, and jumping over a car was absolutely raising the bar, it occurred to me that this was just a logical progression in the evolution of the dunk contest.
About 15 years ago, it was all about how far out you could start your jump from, or could you do a 360 in midair, or put the ball between your legs. The dunk contest was dynamic and fun to watch. Then Vince Carter came along and showed us the perfected versions of each of the past great dunks in 2000. And that's where the bar stayed for an entire decade. Look at all of the winners, and though there are good dunks, nothing truly pushed the actual competition forward during that time. But then came Blake.
Genius, boy, genius! Going for both height and distance by jumping over the hood of a car while catching an alley-oop, that is the creativity this contest needed! Harlem gospel choir...questionable, but I get the sentiment; the NBA knew that this was going to be a money-making dunk- and they were right.
The idea that Blake gave me, though, was that the next step in the evolution of the dunk contest is pretty simple; it becomes a math equation of how far out you can start, and how high up you can get before you get to the rim and make the dunk, right? So, I'll set the over/under at 5 years for the time it takes for us to see someone use a high-jump bar for one of their dunks. If the true measurement for the degree of difficulty is how high up you were and for how long before you still were able to throw the ball down, then the high-jump bar is a damn good measurement tool. Keep on the lookout, it's a comin'...
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