Jeremy Evans of the Utah Jazz was a late addition to the 2012 Sprite Slam Dunk contest, only getting in after the Knicks’ Iman Shumpert bowed out due to injury. But he made the most of it, and the best of his three dunks -- a leap over a seated Gordon Hayward, who threw two balls into the air for Evans to catch and throw down -- was good enough to get the fans’ vote as this year’s champion.
In a year where skits, props, and painfully scripted slam dunks were on the agenda, this one from Evans was both athletic and sincere. He deserved to win it based on this one alone, especially considering some of the other strained attempts at entertainment that took place at the Amway Center on All-Star Saturday night.
Chase Budinger channeled his inner Woody Harrelson for some reason, and imitated (very loosely) the Billy Hoyle charachter from the movie White Men Can’t Jump. He wore a backwards snapback Rockets baseball cap and a white t-shirt, and then threw down a one-handed jam while jumping over ... P. Diddy.
Yeah, I don’t know, either.
Budinger also brought out Cedric Ceballos, who won the event 20 years ago by dunking the ball while “blindfolded.” Technically, yes, there was a blindfold on Ced, but no one believes he couldn’t see through it. Same with Budinger, despite him intentionally missing his first blindfolded attempt badly by pretending he couldn’t see. How do we know that he could? Well, his second attempt was flawless -- a reverse jam that went off without a hitch.
Derrick Williams rode in on the back of a motorcycle driven by the T’Wolves mascot while “California Love” blared over the sound system, then jumped over the motorcycle as it was parked in the paint for a not-that-exciting finish. Williams did have maybe the second-best, least-gimmicky dunk of the night though, enlisting teammate Ricky Rubio to throw one off the side of the backboard for him to catch and flush.
Paul George had the night’s biggest gimmick -- a glow-in-the-dark throwdown, where the lights in the arena were turned out, his uniform and ball glowed (a little), and George did a spinning, 360-degree windmill that might have been the night’s most impressive -- minus the schtick of course, and had we been able to see it.
The dunk contest has devolved greatly into an event that even the NBA diehards won’t buy into anymore; the jokes on Twitter ripping it to shreds were about 100 times more entertaining than the contest itself has become. There’s too much forced silliness planned, too many props and gimmicks, and an overall lack of creativity that’s really taken away from what it started out to be -- a showcase of the grace and athleticism that basketball’s greatest athletes have to offer.
The only way for the league to save the dunk contest and turn things around is to enlist its biggest stars -- yes, we’re looking at you, LeBron -- and rule out the scripted nonsense. The dunks we remember as legendary are ones from the likes of Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, and Vince Carter, and none of them involved blindfolds, motorcycles, mascots, or -- shout out to Orlando’s Dwight Howard -- Superman capes.
We’ll remember this contest as the lowest point that the event has reached in recent years. We’ll also remember it for Evans, though, whose two-ball dunk over Hayward was indeed pretty sweet.
