Justice for Aaron Gordon (But also an acknowledgement that Derrick Jones Jr rules)

Derrick Jones Jr rightfully won the Slam Dunk Contest this year, but let’s be real — Aaron Gordon kind of got robbed.

Chicago has hosted two Slam Dunk contests over the last 32 years, and both of them will go down in infamy.

Three decades after Michael Jordan infamously beat Dominique Wilkins, we had controversy in Chicago once again. Aaron Gordon, for the second time in his career, was seemingly robbed of a clear-cut Slam Dunk title.

For starters, every single one of his dunks prior to his final one of the night got a perfect score. Three times he dunked over Chance The Rapper.

Then, in what seemed like the dunk to end all dunks on the night, Gordon did this:

And then he chef kissed his way into Dunk Contest mythology by dunking over Tacko Fall — who is one of the largest human beings on the planet.

That dunk was the only dunk of the night that Gordon didn’t get a perfect score on, and it’s the reason he ended up losing.

Let’s be perfectly clear: No one should be mad that Derrick Jones Jr won this year’s dunk contest. While all of the populist talk will be about how history repeated itself in a Chicago dunk contest, Jones Jr had some of the most iconic dunks we’ve ever seen.

Like this:

Or, how about this:

The crux of the argument for Gordon is that all his dunks except for his final one got scores of 50. He was, for the most part, flawless. When he was sitting on the scoring table playfully refusing to continue dunking he was well within his right to do so.

But as much as we want Justice For Aaron Gordon, let’s not kill Derrick Jones Jr. It’s not his fault that he was as good as he was. If anything, this should have been a split decision which ended with the judges Texas Chainsawing the trophy in half to give to both dunkers.

Jones is the rightful winner of the Dunk Contest, Aaron Gordon deserved to win — yadda yadda yadda. Perhaps most important of all, the duo made the Dunk Contest matter in ways it hasn’t in a very long time. It’s all we can and will be talking about until we have actual basketball to talk about, and possibly beyond that.

If anything about this night was perfect, it was that.