30 best NBA poster dunks of all time

30. Blake Griffin destroys Kendrick Perkins

At exactly 8.5 seconds into this clip, Kendrick Perkins is contemplating every single one of his life choices that led to this very moment. Blake Griffin, just the year before, put the NBA on notice with his poster dunk over Timofey Mozgov, and this one was just way more brutal.

At theme you’ll notice from most of the great poster dunks is the moments immediately after the dunk is thrown down — not the dunk itself — is what makes these plays special.

This time, you have DeAndre Jordan grabbing Griffin with all of his might, genuinely terrified that Griffin just might take another life at the rim. Griffin looks almost possessed as he walks away from the crime scene, and then there is this look of what can only be described as remorse after he daps up Caron Butler and realizes what he’s done.

There is so much contact at the rim and Griffin fights through all of it in mid-air to throw down one of the greatest dunks in NBA history. This was when the Lob City era of the Clippers were at the peak of their excitement and Griffin was, by and large, the main attraction.

Perkins had the look of a man who had been there before, but would give anything to not have to live through another mid-air clash with one of the NBA’s premier skywalkers [narrator voice: it would not be his last mid-air clash]. Perkins demise was rough for him, but a delight for just about everyone else.