We here at Dime like to celebrate the fun side of basketball. Even beyond the fact that the NBA is the only major professional sports league in the United States that seems to really embrace the silliness that is its general existence of “a sport people play,” basketball is a fun game, played by fun people, with something fun happening across all levels of the sport — from high school, to college, to the pros — on a nightly basis. It’s the only sport I can think of where a player threw soup at a coach. If I am wrong, please, don’t tell me.
Anyway, we’re here today to discuss one of the more parts of the NBA calendar: the Dunk Contest, which happens every All-Star Saturday night as the main event. Sure, there have been some stinkers over the year, but for the most part, it’s great! This year’s is shaping up to be a doozy, as we’ve already heard that Hornets rookie Miles Bridges plans on participating in the event, which is taking place in his city, Charlotte.
This is, for lack of a better phrase, good as hell and I wish with my whole heart that Bridges (in a safe way) rips the rim off of the backboard before standing on top of the judge’s table while holding the rim above his head like it’s a trophy or something. I wish this for everyone, even though we do not know who the other three competitors are going to be.
Also: I would like it if one of those other three competitors are Zion Williamson.
Obviously there are some serious logistical issues here, namely that a college athlete doing something cool and fun would lead to the NCAA headquarters imploding on itself, swallowing up the entire city of Indianapolis and causing a horrific crisis that would get ignored with whatever gigantic scandal is going on in the government at any given moment these days. I, however, would like to suggest that Williamson should be allowed to participate in the Dunk Contest, anyway.
Williamson is a physical and athletic marvel, a breathtaking dunker who established his ability to live above the rim during his high school career. He put forth some of the best mixtapes you’ll ever see during his time Spartansburg Day School, and ever since he stepped on campus at Duke, Williamson has established himself as one of the most exciting college basketball players of the decade. Williamson is 18, so he can still be classified as a “young man,” only he can make impossibly difficult stuff like this look effortless.
That’s extremely good! Man, that’s awesome. Imagine how much you sucked and were bad at everything when you were 18, and then imagine the exact opposite of that, and then you have this. I am projecting. Let’s move on.
The Dunk Contest takes place about two hours away from Duke’s campus this year. It would, theoretically, be easy for Williamson to hop in a car, drive up, and put on a show. The Blue Devils play NC State at Cameron Indoor Stadium earlier in the day, so he could play in a basketball game, be all loose and limber, and make the ride to Charlotte. Williamson also has until the following Wednesday to play again, when Duke hosts North Carolina in Cameron again. He doesn’t even need to fly to/from Pittsburgh or Syracuse or some other Big East school that joined the ACC a few years ago! Both games at home. This is too easy.
In addition to being an excellent in-game dunker, Williamson showed when he was in high school that he’s a breathtaking competition dunker, as he wiped the floor with the competition at the Powerade Jam Fest this past year.
The crazy thing about this is that, yes, those dunks are good … but we’ve seen Williamson jump higher than he did in there, as his eyes aren’t getting to the rim on some of these dunks. Since this, he’s spent time in a college strength and conditioning program and is able to get up even higher, which is very funny, to me.
“But Bill,” you might say in the comments, “we’re a year away from Zion participating in the NBA Dunk Contest whenever he wants, what’s another year of waiting?” It’s a fair question, to which I have one answer: I do not want to wait a year. I want to watch Zion Williamson in the NBA Dunk Contest, measuring his ability to defy gravity and mix power with creativity during the main event of All-Star Saturday against some of the best dunkers in the world.
Above everything else, it would be fun. It would be so fun! Imagine watching a teenager trying to prove he’s the best dunker in the game today against professionals with the entire basketball world watching. I like fun things. This would be fun. Let’s make it happen. And if your mind, for some reason, went right to “this dumb hypothetical by a Dime writer that won’t happen under any circumstance and is mostly for fun would violate his amateur status,” I am going to pray for you.
Oh, and if this happens, R.J. Barrett needs to be allowed to go celebrate Williamson’s dunks.
https://gph.is/2RBdx4L
One last thing, just so it’s on the record: If this is not feasible, please, let’s go with the morally correct compromise position and put Ja Morant in the Dunk Contest, because he rules, too.
