Jones on NBA: The best dunk of them all?

In this age of instant gratification and information overload if you call yourself a basketball fan I’m sure you have seen this well-publicized dunk by Blake Griffin on Monday night. It was the talk of the basketball world after the Los Angeles Clippers 112-100 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Thunder centre Kendrick Perkins will never live it down and somewhere Denver Nuggets forward Timofey Mozgov is smiling. Hey, did anyone ask him what he thought as he was also one of Griffin’s victims last season?

So how good was Griffin’s dunk? It’s at the point where some are calling it the best dunk ever but if you listen to my colleagues, Eric Smith and Michael Grange, it’s not even a dunk.

Ok, so where do I stand? Well first off, while some people, including one of the greatest in-game slam artists of all time, Dominique Wilkins, will not acknowledge it as a dunk, I will. It may not have been a slam dunk, but it was a dunk.

Allow me to sound like the old man yelling at kids to “get off my lawn” for a few lines here. I grew up in an age where dunking was not the necessity that it seems to be today, and as a consequence fundamentals were better. If they ever made me the commissioner of high school hoops, I would take the dunk out of the game until players reached the next level, but that’s just me. There is far too much emphasis on it now and many other essential, fundamental skills are suffering, all thanks to the almighty sports highlight shows and internet videos. OK, the kids are gone and I’m done with my rant.

No question the dunk is an exciting play and what Griffin did in that game was amazing. It even moved me out of my chair and was the essence of how one of the slang terms for dunk was derived. Yes, what Griffin did was called a “throw down”. It may not have been a slam dunk, because he didn’t or at least barely touched the rim but back in the day when you were not allowed to slam dunk, the high flyers would swish dunk. In essence they were so high above the cylinder, they could throw it down without touching the rim. Just think of it this way, when you throw something in the garbage do you touch the container? No need, right, you’re already up high enough. So in these eyes, it makes Griffin’s bucket a serious “throw down”, end of story.

But the best of all time, ah, no, and here comes the old man again. A little perspective here as I’m biased toward the little guy or mid-sized guy that takes it to the big man and tries puts him in the hole. Some of my favourite “grilled cheese” moments come from small men. By the way, the term “grill cheese” was derived thanks to former Raptor Oliver Miller who teased a teammate that was posterized or given the Noxema job, if you will, by Michael Jordan in the inaugural 1995-96 Raptors season. Miller joked that his teammate had it slammed in his face (grill) and he couldn’t tell if the facial expression was a grimace from the effort in trying to block the dunk, or he was just saying “cheese” because he knew he was going to be on a poster.

So speaking of little men climbing the mountain, check out the current mayor of Sacramento and former Phoenix Suns guard Kevin Johnson in the 1994 playoffs dunk over Hakeem Olajuwon or Baron Davis’ post-season highlight for Golden State over former Utah Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko. There is a plethora of Vince Carter jams and the most famous of them all was as a member of Team USA in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney Australia when he immortalized Frenchman, Frederic Weis.

In New York, this jam against the Bulls in the 1993 playoffs by John Starks is simply known as, “The Dunk”.

Want more? All you have to do is look at some of the best dunks by Michael Jordan, or Julius “Dr. J” Erving and you will see cram shots that easily rival Griffin’s. Heck when it comes to big guys, don’t forget Seattle’s Shawn Kemp and his high-wire act or Phoenix Suns’ Tom Chambers flying down the lane over Mark Jackson. And don’t forget there was even a guy who was named Dominique Wilkins was dubbed by the nightly sports shows as “The Human Highlight Film”.

When asked about his dunks, Wilkins said, “there were so many, I can’t remember them.” But after some quizzing, there are two that he recalls clearly. One was a near game-winner against Milwaukee on Bob Lanier where he said that Lanier didn’t speak to him for a long time when it was all said and done. The other was where Trent Tucker of the New York Knicks ran beside him as he took it to the hoop on the left side of the hoop.

“I thought to myself, I hope he ain’t gonna jump,” laughed Wilkins. The result, Tucker ended up watching a serious reverse jam come through the tin.

But the jams that made the biggest impression on me in my formative years were by Erving in the 1977 NBA Finals. The Doc posterized Bill Walton and then took it to Bobby Gross too. Current Raptors assistant Johnny Davis was on that Portland Trailblazers team and on the floor when Doc “got” Walton. If you look closely you can see him wearing No. 16. When asked if he remember it, Davis simply nodded his head, smiled and said, “yep.”

Yes Blake Griffin had a great play and I’ll even go as far as to call it a dunk. But the best of all time, nah, until of course there is another one and the debate is rekindled once again.

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