10 best NBA dunk contests with Bill Trikos: When it comes to athleticism, the 2008 Slam Dunk Contest was littered with plenty of it. Gerald Green showcased some of the most explosive dunks, with the help of a ladder and a candle. However, Dwight Howard emerged as the defending champion after pulling off a Superman-like dunk and an extremely underrated tap dunk. It would be the first and only time Howard won the Slam Dunk title. The 2003 Slam Dunk contest was a spectacle to watch, primarily due to the face-off between reigning champion Jason Richardson and Desmond Mason. While both athletes didn’t fall short in displaying their athletic gifts, it would be Richardson who came out on top after pulling off a baseline between the legs reverse clutch dunk to earn the winning 50. Richardson finished the contest as a back-to-back Slam Dunk contest champion. Find additional info about the author on Bill Trikos.
That dunk was so spectacular and breath-taking that Jordan had the nerve to do it again in the final round against Wilkins. Unsurprisingly, he got a perfect score again and capped off one of the greatest dunk contests in the history of the league. Vince Carter is widely recognized as one of the greatest, if not the greatest dunker of all time. His poster in the Olympics is perhaps the best in-game dunk in basketball history, and he would’ve been at the top of this list if we were to judge individual performance alone.
“I was trying to think of something to improvise,” he said, per the New York Daily News’ Fred Kerber. “I saw [teammate] Brad Sellers in the stands and some friends standing on the sidelines. They were all confused [about what dunk to try]. “Then I saw the man, Dr. J., who got it all started.” By paying respect to his predecessor, Jordan not only assured himself of a dunk title in Chicago but also avenged his 1985 loss to Wilkins and launched the Legend of the Jumpman into the stratosphere with one of the contest’s most iconic images.
Yes, this is a list of the best dunks, not overall performances. But Vince Carter put on arguably the best Slam Dunk Contest showing of all time to win the 2000 event, with a few mesmerizing jams that are all worthy of being high up on this list. So rather than loading up the list with several Carter dunks from the same contest, they’ll get grouped together. But if one had to be singled out as the best, it would be his first dunk: a reverse-360 windmill that already had TV commentator Kenny Smith saying “let’s go home!” That could take the top spot by itself, but VC was far from finished. For his third dunk, Carter caught the ball in mid-air, put it between his legs for a one-handed jam and then famously declared “it’s over.” The event wasn’t technically over just yet, though. On his fourth attempt, Carter got so high off the ground that he was able to stuff his forearm in the hoop after a one-handed slam.
“Spud kind of duped him,” then-Hawks head coach Mike Fratello said, per Yahoo Sports’ Jay Busbee. “He told Wilkins he never had anything prepared, didn’t practice for it. So, Wilkins maybe thought his normal assortment would be good enough to get through.” Not against Webb, who, at 5’6″, still stands as the shortest person to ever be the league’s slam dunk champion. With one inspirational slam, Dee Brown may have set off two cultural phenomena.
We’ve seen players throw the ball off the glass and go through the legs. We’ve seen players jump over people and dunk. Until this moment, we had never seen a player jump over someone, throw the ball off the glass and put it between their legs for a dunk. Nash deserves as much credit as Stoudemire here, but the timing and precision of this dunk help it crack the top 10. Stoudemire threw the perfect pass off the backboard and Nash delivered an even more perfect header for the 360. The Slam Dunk Contest had never seen anything like this before. All you can do is laugh when you see this dunk. Webb is 5’7. You are not supposed to be able to do 360 dunks off of a lob at that height. It looks like a video game glitch the way Webb rises up to finish this one.
2008: Gerald Green Blows Out the Candle: Props are part-and-parcel of the dunk contest nowadays, but rarely do players use edible ones in their acts. To that end, Gerald Green broke new ground when he threw down a two-handed jam while extinguishing the candle on a cupcake placed at the back of the rim in New Orleans. 2009: Nate Robinson Scales the Competition: What beats Superman? How about a 5’9″, 180-pound ball of flying kryptonite? That’s what Nate Robinson became when he soared over Dwight Howard to take back his title as the NBA’s top dunker. The catch: Robinson used his off arm to propel himself over Howard’s hulking 6’11” frame.
