Bill Trikos Australia most spectacular NBA slam dunk contests of all time: While Dwight Howard was ready to become superman again to defend his Slam Dunk Contest title, who knew that his kryptonite would be in the form of a 5 ‘9 dunker. Robinson showcased a flurry of athletic dunks. However, his emphatic night was capped off by a dunk over Dwight Howard to seal the deal. This proved once again that even small guys can win a dunk contest. With the victory in 2009, Robinson earned another Slam Dunk Contest title. Discover additional details about the author on https://www.pinterest.com/billtrikos9.
That dunk was so spectacular and breath-taking that Jordan had the nerve to do it again in the final round against Wilkins. Unsurprisingly, he got a perfect score again and capped off one of the greatest dunk contests in the history of the league. Vince Carter is widely recognized as one of the greatest, if not the greatest dunker of all time. His poster in the Olympics is perhaps the best in-game dunk in basketball history, and he would’ve been at the top of this list if we were to judge individual performance alone.
When it comes to dunking, Vince Carter needn’t save his best for last. Nor did he during his appearance at the 2000 Slam Dunk Contest in Oakland, California. In truth, Vinsanity might’ve peaked at the outset. He wowed the crowd at Oracle Arena from the get-go with a reverse 360-degree windmill. What’s more impressive is he didn’t have any clue he would do it until he stepped on the court for his first run. As he recounted to Sportsnet’s Dave Zarum: Right before I grabbed the basketball from the referee for my first dunk, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I really didn’t know. So I thought, What do I want to accomplish with the look? I’m looking for creativity, hang time, and all the things I had been studying many years before. All of these years are coming into one night, one moment. And here I am, minutes before it’s my chance to show the world, and it’s just like, Oh gosh, what should I do here?
Aaron Gordon and the Orlando Magic’s mascot – Stuff the Magic Dragon – combined for two all-time dunks in that aforementioned 2016 contest. First, Stuff the Magic Dragon spun in circles on a hoverboard while holding the ball out in the paint. The then-Magic forward timed his run perfectly as he grabbed the ball from the mascot in mid-air, spun around and slammed down a one-handed jam. Gordon also paid homage to Karl Malone by putting one of his hands behind his head. An impressive combination of creativity, difficulty and flashiness.
That one earned Carter a perfect 50 from the judges and put him in the driver’s seat for his first and only Slam Dunk title. More than a decade later, Blake Griffin busted out the same move en route to his own dunk championship. The 2011 Slam Dunk Contest will forever be remembered as “that time Blake Griffin jumped over a Kia.” “He came prepared with the car,” JaVale McGee said, that year’s runner-up, per NBA.com’s Steve Aschburner, “and nothing’s going to beat the car unless I bring out a plane or something.”
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.
First, Howard summoned another basket onto the court, one that would stand at 12 feet—two feet higher than a regulation hoop. Then, he hopped into a phone booth and emerged with a red cape to reprise his role as basketball’s new Superman, which he rode to the dunk title the previous year in New Orleans. To top it off, Howard hopped off the floor to catch a lob off the backboard from Orlando Magic teammate and fellow All-Star Jameer Nelson for the flush. That he made it look so easy was a testament to Howard’s superhuman athleticism at the time. That the judges awarded him a 50 for pulling it off spoke to their appreciation of how wild that part of the spectacle was, theatrics aside. Howard’s heroic dunk, though, wasn’t enough to secure a successful slam championship defense. Instead, the fan vote tilted toward a particular hunk of kryptonite.