The five best NBA Dunk Contests ever

Take a look back at the five best NBA Dunk Contests in history.

For more than three decades now, the NBA Slam Dunk Contest has been one of the biggest attractions of All-Star Weekend. Typically held the Saturday night before the All-Star Game, it has featured some of game’s biggest names, many of which we’ll get to shortly, and has provided NBA fans with some of the most jaw-dropping moments in history. I’m not going to pretend that every single one of them has been great but more often than not, we’re at least entertained. The prestige isn’t quite there like it used to be, as many of the NBA’s big names don’t participate like they once did but it’s still a showcase that can be very fun to watch.

There are a lot of very good contests that unfortunately just weren’t good enough to make the top five. For instance, this list includes nothing from Dwight Howard, Nate Robinson or Kobe Bryant. There’s also times where one dunk may stand out and give you that jump out of your seat moment (Dee Brown, Cedric Ceballos and the blindfold, Jason Richardson off the glass) but the contest as a whole couldn’t match the moment. When putting this list together, I wanted the entire package. Was I entertained from start to finish? How many times did I jump out of my seat? How many times did my jaw drop? Simply put, did it have that “wow factor” that I was looking for? These five NBA Slam Dunk Contests did just that.

5. 1985

Participants: Dominique Wilkins, Michael Jordan, Julius Erving, Clyde Drexler, Larry Nance, Orlando Woolridge, Darrell Griffith, Terence Stansbury

If you’re looking strictly at the names involved, this might be the deepest field in the history of the event. Dr. J may have been there simply for nostalgia’s sake but he could still throw down and brought back some of the classics from his ABA days. Larry Nance, the previous year’s champion, was given a bye into the second round (Erving was as well for finishing second in 1984) was an amazing dunker and you can see a lot of him in his son. And while a lot of people may not be overly familiar with the likes of Orlando Woolridge, Darrell Griffith or Terence Stansbury, these guys could dunk with the best of ’em and put on a fun show for the crowd in Indianapolis. Clyde Drexler was nicknamed “The Glide” for a reason and then you had Dominique Wilkins and a rookie named Michael Jordan rounding out the field. Yeah, there’s a few big names in there, don’t you think?

The highlight of the first round came from Terence Stansbury, who scored the only 50 in the round with an amazing 360 “Statue of Liberty” that looked so smooth. Dominique, who had come up just short of the finals the year before, wowed the audience with his power and scored two 49’s and a 47 in the opening round to easily move on to the semifinals. Jordan and Stansbury joined him with total score of 130 each and Drexler, Woolridge and Griffith were all sent packing.

I will say that defending champion Larry Nance looked really bored to be there and it showed in the semifinals as he came in last with a total score of 131. Dr. J came in just ahead of him at 132 in his final dunk contest appearance but it was great to see him get after it one last time and bring out the cuff dunk and the reverse but it was easy to see that he just couldn’t keep up with the youngsters. Stansbury continued to impress but it was clear to see that a showdown between Dominique and Jordan was imminent and that’s exactly what happened. Jordan scored a 50 on his final attempt of the round with a jam from the free throw line (his foot was a little over) and Wilkins just kept throwing down those monster dunks off of two feet. So impressive.

The beauty of these older contests is that they just didn’t miss that much. It’s very hard to watch some of the modern ones in which the guys take three, four and five chances to do something and then you’re just out of it. But Jordan and Dominique just got down to business in the finals and while Jordan was good, Wilkins was just better and that two-handed windmill has always been one of my favorite dunks and shut the door on the rookie from Chicago. More on these two a little later.