So many revisionist historians ... Who's hating? Calling something for what it is is not hating. No one is saying Howard didn't deserved to win. The other dunks he slammed alone merited him winning. Is Clutch a hater? This morning on the radio, he said it wasn't a dunk. I don't know why people can't voice their opinion on this board without having to contend with their opinions being degraded to hate simply because it differs from someone else's.
D. Howard's Superman move was not a dunk. It was one of the most impressive feats of athleticism and showmanship I have ever seen on a basketball court. Even though it was not technically a dunk IMO it deserved a 50 for being straight up nice. The fact he got that high and that far off of two feet makes it even more mind boggling.
For the last time, IT IS A DUNK! The definition of a dunk is to score by throwing the ball into the basket with your hands above the rim. I'm so tired of all the comments on youtube also, saying it's not a dunk.
why are people getting on people for saying it wasn't really a dunk? hell i loved the build up. i like howard. howard was the star of the night. putting on the cape sold that dunk. and seeing it live from the camera on the floor, you just seeing the hulking figure of howard enter the frame, soar into the air, and then you see the ball fly through the hoop. it was incredible. but seeing the replay and realizing he came up short did take a little bit away from it. yeah he still deserved to win, but i can't see how anyone can't feel it took at least a little from it. i don't blame him. he had to jump a little more up to get to the pass and it took away some of his forward momentum and so he came up a little short of what he expected and just threw it in. it still looked really cool and the stills look damn cool, but he came up short. people pulling out these dictionary definitions of dunks? come on. pretty much every dunk in dunk contest history has involved grabbing or hitting the rim. turning to semantics just to defend your side when everyone realizes what a dunk usually is is weak. if moon had taken off from that piece of tape, come up 2 feet short, and just thrown it in would you really say he dunked from behind the free throw line and had topped everyone else who dunked from just in front of it? i wouldn't have. and saying he often throws his dunks in is different. carmelo almost never grabs the rim on his dunks, but he's right there to do it. he just avoids slamming his hand into the rim and throws it through. dwight didn't make it to the rim to do that, completely different. and are y'all really saying throwing it through is harder than dunking? part of your dunk is doing all the crazy things you're going to do and still ending up at the rim and being balanced enough to jam it through. ending up too far from the rim and just throwing it in is easier than having to have jumped the entire distance to get there to jam it in. everyone's getting so caught up in the ridiculous "you're a hater, no you're a hater" BS. it was still awesome, howard deserved to win, howard is awesome, the superman dunk is still great, but actually jamming it through would've been harder and made it even cooler and i don't see how that can be argued.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slam_dunk Can we put this to sleep now? When you dunk your donut, your fingers don't need to touch the coffee cup. As long as your hands are above the tub, it's a dunk.
Great Post. However, he did not come up short. That's the way he planned it in order to emphasize the flying motion. If he takes off closer to the basket, the flight looks less impressive. Look at his preparation for the dunk. He practiced that dunk especially for this event. It was just as planned.
The only other thing Howard should have done was have a phone booth brought on the floor before he changed into Superman. His performance will be remembered for a long time. He should not enter another dunk contest unless he can definitely top last night.
NO, I really want to see him next year!!! He is so creative and I am sure that he can do better next year.
Im watching an old allstar game from the early nineties and man they played the game alotmore seriously then. now they make a big spectacle of the game. it dont seem to be about winning but showin off. Takin things seriously is whats lacking in the game today. not enough people take the game seriously.people dumping games when fans paid money to see them play hard. Teams resting stars when again fans paid money to see them. Man back then people played with broken legs!! what a shame.
Additionally, you didn't see the lame "no-contact" rules back then, as fouls wouldn't be called for merely breathing on a perimeter player. They still managed to score more points back then than what is being scored now. The NBA changed all the rules, and started enforcing as little contact as possible, because they felt the game was getting to physical... when in reality, the quality of the typical NBA star was being diluted secondary to early entry rookies/High schoolers and expansion. The one thing that may need to be re-visted (per Pat Riley) is the zone defense... not simply because it completely neutralizes the low-post game, but mainly because zone offenses need more than 24 seconds in order to get a decent quality shot (like college).
A slam dunk (or simply a dunk) is a type of basketball shot that is performed when a player jumps in the air and manually powers the ball downward through the basket with one or both of his hands. This is a standard field goal worth two points. There is one component required for this particular "field goal" to be classified as a "dunk": 1) the ball must be thrown into the basketball net in a downward motion where both the ball and player's hand(s) are both above the basketball rim. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slam_dunk "to throw (a basketball) into the basket from above the rim" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dunk Doesn't say anything about hands on the rim.
because nobody played as much defense back then as they do now, and people weren't athletic and swoll as all get out like they are now. the game was turning into a wrestling match, far more than it had ever been, something had to be done. mostly because there was a much faster pace. the actual points per 100 possessions has changed by maybe 1.5 over time, and that can mostly be accounted for by better defense and more defensive-oriented players making it onto the court (which obviously hurts offense both ways b/c those guys hurt the other team's and their own team's offense). it was. go watch the detroit/indiana series from i believe 2003 (whenever prince blocked reggie miller's layup in the greatest defensive game ever). it was ridiculous. or most miami/new york series in the late 90's. the level of continuous physicality in those games is just beyond what it had ever been. dishing out a few harder fouls over the course of a game does not add up to just how physical it was getting. yeah, sure. 6 billion people playing a sport that was reaching the peak of it's popularity in it's home country and seeing it's international popularity explode suddenly got worse at that sport. expansion only dilutes talent if the talent pool remains constant. well, it hasn't. the population of America has grown fairly proportionally with the number of teams, the nba grew in popularity right as the guys who play now were young and watching it, thus increasing the number of young people playing basketball, and then the international talent pool has gone from essentially providing 0% of nba talent to around 20% now. considering we've only added about 6 teams since the 80's and we've got 6 teams worth of international players playing, dilution would seem to be a poor argument. less scoring doesn't mean less quality. it can just mean athleticism and attention to defense has come very far and necessarily holds offense down more than in past eras. agreed, zones are somewhat hard to break quickly. and allowing zones can only help defense. if the best defense possible is man to man, then everyone can just play man. but if mixing any sort of zone in (even if it's just zoning up the weakside) helps, then allowing zone will help defenses. at worst, zones allow defenses to break even, at best they can help significantly, as we rockets fans know from watching yao get doubled w/o the ball.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o258/jpisani2/d12.jpg to me it is like a hook shot when yao does hooks he throws it down do we call it a dunk then every time he does that?
Dwight Howard really shut it down yesterday and it was one of the best individual performances ever...but it's still not better than VC's. Nobody looks as good dunking the ball as VC. Dwight used more props to make his dunks look good but VC used nothing but himself and the ball.
ppl say tmac doesn't deserve to be in the game this yr (which he doesn't), but there are more undeserving players than him. jkidd and joe johnson are obvious (horrible records in the EAST) - and yet no one even criticizes them like they did with tmac. brandon roy deserves it b/c it's a good-story, but let's be real, at his best, his #s pale in comparison to a sucking tmac.
Wow @ the brandon roy comment. I think your being a tad unrealistic with that statement I like Tmac and all but roy at his best doesnt compare to a sucking Tmac? Thats just crazy talk
