I like Jeremy Evans a lot. Everyone here at Dime does. We’ve supported the #LetJeremyDunk movement since the beginning. I spent some time with him over All-Star Weekend, and we joked about his admittedly horrendous Call of Duty skills and the worst dunker on Utah. But he shouldn’t have won the dunk contest. Paul George had the best dunks. I’m not accepting arguments. That’s a fact (although it would’ve been Derrick Williams winning had he been able to finish his last one).
Now that the disappointing loss has set in, George is pissed. He told the Indianapolis Star recently that the dunk contest has become “a joke” and that he figured he was destined to lose because of his Larry Bird influence.
“(Not to) take nothing away from the dunk contest, (but) it was a joke,” George told the paper. “I guess whoever had the biggest celebrity involved in their dunk was going to be the winner. I guess I should have tried to reach out to some people.”
And the fan vote? George isn’t uttering anything new when he says it’s stupid and pointless, and that there should be five judges handing out scores instead. He continued on, saying the contest is missing the one thing it desperately needs: star power.
“I agree, you have to have the faces of the league come back and get involved in it,” George told the Indianapolis Star. “That’s what really made it big back in the day when you had Jordan and Dominique going at it. That was the All Stars and the guys that were the men in the league. That’s what fans want to see.”
For me, there’s a very easy explanation for all the disappointment in the dunk contest: Expectations. Every year they jump, and the players can’t keep up (It also doesn’t hurt to have hundreds of videos being published online every day with “professional” dunkers making the NBA guys look like Andre Miller.). Expectations cause missed dunks and bad props, which almost always kill the momentum. Instead of only appreciating dunks for what they are, everyone wants to be the first to say, “Yeah, but that’s the same dunk as…”
And I think this goes without saying, but having the contest come down to a fan vote is the worst idea since The Wheel.
What’s the dunk contest’s biggest problem?
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