For all of you that have been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, or simply don’t care about the NBA (shame on you), something magical happened last night. It wasn’t a Brian Scalabrine game-winning shot or Dwight Howard shooting 100 percent from the free throw line, but it was magical to say the least. Here, let me just stop talking about it and show you:
See, I told you.
While that dunk has been the highlight of every sports related show for the past day, and rightfully so, some people are calling it the “best dunk” of all-time, and personally, I’m not even sold on it being the best dunk this year. Don’t get me wrong, I jumped out of my seat when I saw it live (mainly because I was going to grab the remote I threw across the room when the Pistons went down by 20), but the people surrounding the monster throw down made it a little more intense than I think it actually was. Also, the fact that poor Brandon Knight looked as if he was paralyzed from the hair line down didn’t help his case.
Let’s start with the play itself. The Clippers ran some type of off-the-ball hiding pick and roll with Lamar Odom and DeAndre Jordan at the top of the three point line that REALLY confused Pistons center Greg Monroe. So, being the teammate that he is supposed to be, the 6-foot-2 Knight stepped up to help his struggling center but ended up getting yolked on by a big man twice his size running full speed. Hey, at least Knight made the right basketball play, right?
Second, if you watched the game, the Clippers were dominating from the moment the ball was thrown in the air. After the first quarter it was evident that they were going to be playing a decent amount of Ryan Hollins and Ronnie Turiaf, and you could tell by the time the dunk occurred that the Clippers knew the game was over. With that being said, I don’t think the bench would have reacted that way if they were trailing the Pistons, but since they were leading by a “turn the channel” type of margin, they were clearly on to the next game. The Clippers bench reacted very immaturely to a situation in which they CLEARLY were the better team, making the dunk that much worse. It’s not like they don’t see dunks like that every night between Jordan and Blake Griffin.
Lastly, Monroe’s reaction was timeless. Click play on the video one more time and watch his reaction from 5 to 7 seconds. He looked like someone came around the corner and scared him when he thought he was home alone. C’mon Greg. You can’t react like that for several reason. One, it was your fault that it happened. I hope when they watched the film over again that he saw how atrocious his defense was. Second, you’re down by 21! You should have went at Jordan for doing that to your helpless point guard, instead you sat there in your Bruce Lee pose. Third, do you remember what happened to you in crunch time against a smaller Michael Kidd-Gilchrist? Let me remind you:
Not so funny now, is it? (By the way, that along with this dunk are my candidates for dunk of the year)
I loved the dunk, I loved the way Jordan handled it, but it was overhyped given the circumstances. Knight gives up about nine inches to Jordan. The Clippers bench reaction was so epic because of the huge lead, and the fact Knight looked like Manny Pacquiao after getting dropped in the Juan Manuel Marquez fight didn’t help either.
Top five this year? No doubt. But it was against a man that’s almost a foot shorter than him. Impressive, but overhyped.
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