Monday night saw a pair of absolutely vicious poster dunks in the NBA, as it was a bad night to be a defender standing in the paint on a fastbreak.
The first (and one everyone talked about) was Anthony Edwards detonating on John Collins in what Edwards called “the best dunk of my career” after finally getting to see a replay. The other one happened in Hawks-Lakers a little later in the evening when Jalen Johnson skied over Austin Reaves trying to take a charge on the first play of the game, which was a very poor decision.
The Lakers would go on to blow out the Hawks, which meant Reaves was in a good mood when he met with the media and was willing to have some fun with his early misfortune being on the wrong end of a nasty dunk. When Dan Woike began to ask about the dunk, Reaves joked “this is why I don’t like you” and after Reaves initially pushed back on there being anything to add, noting everyone saw it, Woike had a great rebuttal with “nobody had your view.”
Reaves quipped “you don’t want my view” but then gave an actual answer about how it was probably the first time he ever really got dunked on, joking it was a pretty good run for a guy that’s not super athletic, but this time he tried to take a charge and Johnson “got one.” As Reaves notes, it’ll probably happen again as there’s a lot of insane athletes in the NBA and if you have a long enough career you’re gonna get caught a few times. This time, at least, someone else got caught worse on the same night so Reaves can send Anthony Edwards a thank you card for that.
