This past weekend’s Slam Dunk Contest has been lauded as perhaps the best ever, a revolution in the dunking arts, an exhibition that has saved the dying medium. Aaron Gordon and eventual champion Zach LaVine pulled off dunks we’d never seen, and some we’d never even imagined. And it wasn’t just the dunks themselves, it was the entire extended process of respectful one-upmanship that built to a crescendo. LaVine and Gordon trading acts of insatiable curiosity and acrobatic brilliance was a sight to behold.
Of all basketball plays, dunking is what captures our imagination most viscerally. It’s what separates the athletic deities from the mere mortals. I could make a half-court shot. Probably not on my first try, but clear my schedule for a week and I’m pretty sure I could knock at least one in. The barrier between you, me, and a variety of highlight-worthy shots is merely the law of probability. Make the sample size large enough and anything is possible — almost.
I will never dunk a basketball. That would require rewriting the laws of both probability and physics. The most delusional average joe can talk himself into being the second-coming of Stephen Curry if they’d have taken the time to focus on their game. No amount of imagined practice or hypothetical hard work could turn you or me into Zach LaVine. Because the dunk feels so far out of our grasp for most of us, so far from our physical realities, we can’t help but be drawn to it.
Everyone has their own personal tastes when it comes to the slam dunk. I prefer mine with two hands and an implication of fury. With a defender involved, if possible, and a brief rim hang at the end for emphasis. It’s why Kenyon Martin and Stromile Swift would make my personal Mt. Dunkmore, and Julius Erving and Michael Jordan would just be invited to come watch the ribbon-cutting ceremony. It’s why Donnell Harvey at the 1999 McDonald’s All-American Game is still my favorite dunk contest performance ever. And why Derrick Rose swallowing the immortal soul of Goran Dragic will be more impressive, to me, than any LeBron James open-court one-hander.
I can’t help but see the performances of LaVine and Gordon on Saturday night through the lens of my own dunk-biases. I have shared my dunk contest curmudgeonliness in the past; the event is an abstraction. By separating dunks from the defense and the context of a game, by isolating the art on an empty court, it becomes something else, something different. It is this, not just the quality of talent that or creativity, that I think has caused the decline appeal of the dunk contest in recent years. Gordon and LaVine were an apex of creativity and execution, but it was also the unrepeatable pairing, the playing off of each other that elevated the whole thing. I’m not sure we’ll see that again for a long time. All that is to say, I’m not sure the dunk contest was saved or really needed saving.
The slam dunk itself is in a wonderful place right now. It has been around for seventy some years. It has been aged in a stew of influence and inspiration for generations. There is a canon that must be learned and respected. There are schools of expression and families of stylistic influence. There are myths and legends and a rich history to be used as fodder for constant reinvention. And this whole history is available at our at the speed of digital technology. There was a time, before the days of social media and streaming video, where the dunk contest was really the one place to gorge yourself on the form. Now all you have to do is fire up YouTube.
Whatever your dunking predilections, we are in a Golden Age. Dunkers of every shape and size, professional and amateur, are pushing the form. And no longer do we have to wait for that once-a-year, Sprite-sponsored event, to see what the full range of possibilities presented by a human body in flight. Whether you prefer one-hand or two, old or new, the internet has something for you. Go back and watch the oldies, the obscure, the undiscovered gems, the independents. Check out some high school mix-tapes and stretch your imagination with what the future of dunking might look like.
The most beautiful thing about Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordon, in all their dunking resplendence, is that they exist at this moment in time. They can build on the legacies of Jordan and ‘Nique, with the accumulated wisdom of all the dunkers that came before them, and we have the luxury of pulling up the visual records and putting them all side-by-side. Most of us won’t ever get to fly as they do, to feel the power and to channel it into whatever designs we can dream up. But we can watch it over and over and over again, until we’re almost there. Technology has truly brought the dunk to the people. All the people.
And so, as I watch Aaron Gordon go under both legs one more time, and then switch over for a few revolutions with Melvin Levett and a backboard high-five with Corey Maggette, I’m happy to say that the state of the dunk is strong.