That's a classic Gang Starr line from their "Moment of Truth" album and it applies to the very outdated and stale dunk content we witnessed at NBA All-Star Weekend in Dallas.
It was an incredible venue and the game itself was exciting and came down to the last shot but the dunk contest was just plain awful. The stars don't want to do it and as athletic as Nate Robinson is I don't want to see him anymore or see him have to try dunks 15 times just so he can pull it off.
My proposal stems from something we saw last year. Dwight Howard dunked on an 11-foot hoop in the contest and did it with ease.
Get a hoop that can be raised and do it track and field, high jump style.
Start it at 11 feet and keep raising it until only one guy can jam it. I don't know one person that wouldn't find this incredibly fascinating.
How high guy can these guys go? 12-and-a-half feet? 13? We have all seen LeBron throw it down when his head is practically even with the rim so what would his ceiling be.
Could a big man like Howard with height and reach compete with a smaller James who can jump out of the building.
Get four guys and just let them go. They can run dunk lines like pre-game layup lines and if one guy can't hit the level the other guys do he's out. Keep ratcheting it up. The pizzaz of the 360's and windmills would be gone but the intrigue would surely not.
Moreover this competition would create precedent. We have seen the old dunks from MJ at the free-throw line to 'Nique's aerial acrobatics but like the "hardest shot" event at the NHL's All-Star weekend, a tangible bar would be set and that number would be ingrained in your psyche.
For 16 years Al Iafrate's 105.2 mph slap shot stood as the record and every year guys went gunning for it. Using a vastly-improved carbon fiber stick Zdeno Chara bested that mark by two-tenths of a second in last year's competition and I remember how exciting it was.
Of even greater importance I think guys like James and Howard would want to try this. It wouldn't be as dangerous as trying the wilder dunks and I know LeBron would look at this and one more possible stamp of his greatness.
The Jordan-Kobe-LeBron debate will rage on but a high-dunk competition would be one measuring stick for generations of hoopers.
13 feet? Is it really possible? We have no clue, but I would sure like to find out.
1 comment:
Great blogpost Tuck. I think that you are dead on about this. After watching the dunk contest I thought to myself, this was extremely uninteresting. But last year I did really enjoy when Dwight did that 11-foot rim dunk and think that was the right direction.
Like Guru said in the past they need to update their formulas because there isn't really any more intrigue in what they are doing now. They also need to tighten the restrictions on how many time you can try something.
Hopefully they do something because I am sure that as we have become less interested the ratings have declined as well. I'd love to see LeBron and Howard battle it out. If LeBron can grab a quarter off the top of the backboard, I'll bet he can dunk on a pretty tall hoop!
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