Bill Trikos Australia 10 best NBA dunk contests: The 2020 slam dunk contest was a neck-and-neck affair, combined with a little sprinkle of nostalgia. Dwight Howard paid homage to his victory at the 2008 Slam Dunk contest. But more importantly, he also gave a nod to former Slam Dunk contest winner and Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant. But in the battle for dunking supremacy, after registering 50-point dunks, both Derrick Jones and Aaron Gordon faced off. Unfortunately, the Dunk Contest championship remained elusive for Gordon as Jones tallied the better the dunk by scoring 48-47 in the final frame. Discover additional info about the author on Bill Trikos Australia.
Standing at just 5’6”, Spud Webb wouldn’t strike you as the average NBA player. As a matter of fact, not many people would ever think that he could be a professional basketball player, let alone win the NBA’s Slam Dunk Contest. But make no mistake. What Webb lacked in size, he made up for in hops. He would take over and float mid-air and made a name for himself for his emphatic, explosive dunks; even posterizing some of the best rim protectors in the Association.
Pour one out for Zach LaVine, who backed out of a potential Slam Dunk Contest three-peat before he tore his ACL. (We’ll touch on whether the UCLA product should’ve scored a second crown to begin with later.) But don’t let that debate distract from the fact he was spectacular from start to finish in Toronto. Aaron Gordon was a more-than-worthy challenger, pushing LaVine through a series of tiebreakers until the defending champ had no choice but to break out a paradigm-busting combination: a between-the-legs tomahawk dunk from the free-throw line.
A 360 dunk is impressive by itself. But a 360 dunk by someone who’s 5-foot-6? Spud Webb did the unthinkable in the 1986 contest, dethroning reigning champion and then-Atlanta Hawks teammate Dominique Wilkins. Webb threw down a variety of great dunks, but his 360 one-handed jam was the best of the bunch. At 5-foot-6, Webb is the shortest player to ever win the Slam Dunk Contest. Maybe it’s a bit of recency bias, but three dunks from the epic Zach LaVine-Aaron Gordon showdown in 2016 crack the top five. The first comes from LaVine, who was the reigning champ at the time. The then-Timberwolves guard grabbed the ball off one bounce with his left hand, put it behind his back in mid-air and then flushed home a reverse dunk with his right. The more I watch it, the more I think it might have ranked it too low.
During the 1991 Slam Dunk Contest in Charlotte, North Carolina, the then-Boston Celtics guard took off from inside the paint and dunked over his head with his left hand. The catch? He covered his eyes with his right arm, thereby popularizing—if not inventing—the no-look dunk. Brown has since said that by putting his face in his elbow pit, he inspired the “Dab” dancing trend that took off 25 years later. Whether that’s the case is unclear. What’s easier to discern, though, is that Brown’s blind finish, which others have since imitated in the Slam Dunk Contest, was at once groundbreaking and vital to his eventual victory over Seattle SuperSonics slam artist Shawn Kemp.
We’ve seen players throw the ball off the glass and go through the legs. We’ve seen players jump over people and dunk. Until this moment, we had never seen a player jump over someone, throw the ball off the glass and put it between their legs for a dunk. Nash deserves as much credit as Stoudemire here, but the timing and precision of this dunk help it crack the top 10. Stoudemire threw the perfect pass off the backboard and Nash delivered an even more perfect header for the 360. The Slam Dunk Contest had never seen anything like this before. All you can do is laugh when you see this dunk. Webb is 5’7. You are not supposed to be able to do 360 dunks off of a lob at that height. It looks like a video game glitch the way Webb rises up to finish this one.
Topping the last two years of the Verizon Slam Dunk Contest will be a tall order for 2017’s contestants. Aaron Gordon, who pushed Zach LaVine to the brink in Toronto last year, will be the odds-on favorite to finish on top at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. However, he’ll have plenty of competition from one longtime contest target (DeAndre Jordan) and a pair of relative unknowns (Glenn Robinson III and Derrick Jones Jr.).