Depending on who you talk to, Meyers Leonard either looks like Ivan Drago, or as we said in Smack, Triple H. He’s big, strong, ripped, and looks like he should be out there smashing heads. Instead, he struggled with consistency at Illinois, and who knows how much time he’ll get in Portland this year?
Last night against the Nuggets, he came off the bench for 16 minutes, blocking two shots while struggling with turnovers. But he did get everyone in the building off their seats with this play: an alley-oop he finished through contact on top of Wilson Chandler.
Will this be Leonard’s best highlight of the year? It’s possible. It was that nasty. But was it even the best dunk by a rookie last night? Toronto’s Jonas Valanciunas calls that into question. He had his own struggles with turnovers (four of them) while posting a solid 8-point, 8-rebound and 3-block outing. Yet he also had a nasty one-handed spike dunk.
Okay, so maybe Jonas’ ACTUAL dunk wasn’t quite as good, but you have to include the move: pump-faking Emeka Okafor off the floor, and then taking off across the lane with a pretty solid Blake Griffin impersonation.
Which dunk was better?
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