No 360 windmills or career-ending poster dunks, but this week is more about quantity than quality as the NBA’s best delivered a full week’s worth of quality dunks and alley-oops.
Leading the way this week are a pair of slams from Portland’s backcourt and a pair of posters from some of the league’s top power forwards.
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10. Vince Carter dunks on DeMar DeRozan, annoys Canada
Toronto, have you not learned by now that Vince Carter doesn’t like you and especially doesn’t like it when you let him know about it?
Vince has made a career out of drawing the ire of the Raptors faithful. Whether it’s for leaving the team over a decade ago, hitting a game-winner, or dunking on their potential All-Star, Carter is going to rile up the city of Toronto one way or another.
9. Gerald Green goes coast-to-coast vs. Indiana
You’d assume the league’s best defense would be aware that Gerald Green doesn’t require much airspace to lift off and dunk. But here, the Pacers defense was all sorts of off compared to the historic level of defensive efficiency they’ve been setting this season. They give up 124 points to the Suns, two off of this high-flying slam from Green.
8. Gerald Henderson dunks on Taj Gibson
It’s Taj Gibson making his weekly appearance on the week’s top ten, but in an uncommon position. Rather than being the one doing the posterizing, he is the one playing the role of victim.
Gibson wasn’t quick enough to respond to the sneaky-ridiculous hops of Gerald Henderson, who drove baseline and went over the top of the athletic power forward.
7. Earl Clark dunks on Nazr Mohammed
It truly surprises me that Nazr Mohammed is only 36 years old. After playing for eight different teams, it feels as if Mohammed should have been nearing his 40s by now. Either way, what Earl Clark does to Nazr here isn’t fair as he drives past Gibson and throws down.
6. Terrence Ross throws down the alley-oop on a memorable night
The Air Canada Centre hasn’t been as alive in a long time as it was on Saturday night when Terrence Ross punched in this alley-oop off a turnover he created.
The alley-oop was just two of an unlikely 51 points from Ross, who dropped ten three-pointers in the loss to the Clippers.
5. LeBron outruns the Lakers
As large as he is, LeBron James should not be capable of outrunning an entire team of professional basketball players, point and shooting guards included.
Instead, that’s exactly what LeBron does. He starts out in the middle of a pack of Lakers, then turns on the jets as he makes a move on Kendall Marshall that’s enough to elude the point guard, leaving an open lane for the signature tomahawk.
4. Wesley Matthews finishes the inbounds alley-oop vs. Denver
In the middle of a special and unexpected year, the Portland Trail Blazers continued with those themes with this inbounds alley-oop from Nicolas Batum to Wesley Matthews.
Poor Randy Foye was just a victim who got caught in the crosshairs.
3. Paul Millsap dunks on Aron Baynes
Off topic, but the name Aron reminds me of this Key & Peele sketch.
In all seriousness, though, this dunk is rude. Paul Millsap should have apologized afterwards, even if his Hawks did end up on the business end of a beating.
2. Anthony Davis dunks on Glen Davis
If I were Anthony Davis, I, too, would be peeved that the Orlando Magic thought they could defend me with Glen Davis and get away with it.
The result, an unbelievable poster dunk by Davis over the top of Davis and Victor Oladipo, was to be expected.
1. Damian Lillard dunks on the Nuggets
Damian Lillard looked a little like Russell Westbrook on this dunk over Denver where he takes on the whole team.
Lillard starts off with a quick split of a double-team, just to be given a runway to dunk between two Nugget players who were clearly caught off guard by Damian’s quick hops.
What do you think?
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