So the NBA wrapped up its marquee All-Star Weekend 2013 Sprite Slam Dunk contest last night.
Gone are the years when Michael Jordon, Dominique Wilkins, Spud Webb, and Vince Carter wowed basketball fans with creative dunks that have never been seen before. Enter the NBA epoch of basketball no names whose statistics show they wouldn't be able to hit a bucket unless the rim was the size of a soccer goal.
With that said, these ballers do have fresh legs and the hops to go along with them. The slamma jamma featured six: Terrence Ross, Eric Bledsoe, Gerald Green, Kenneth Faried, James White, and last year's champ Jeremy Evans.
Fans partook in the voting this year by casting ballots on twitter, text messages, mobile apps and NBA.com. As the NBA's best benchwarmers with the highest vertical showed of what they could do, fans and judges decided that Jeremy Evans of the Utah Jazz and rookie Terrence Ross of the Toronto Rapters were worthy of moving on to the final.
There weren't many Ooohs! or Aaahs! but a spectacle that set a new low for showboating. Evans, who averages 1-point-per-game and 5-minutes of average play time, dunked over a covered painting. Afterwards, he unveiled the artwork that was a painting of himself dunking a basketball. Thank God the portrait wasn't of him shooting because that would have been as embarrassing as his game play.
Ross followed up Evans with a tribute dunk to Vince Carter. He put on Carter's Raptors jersey and imitated his thrilling dunk from the 2000 competition when he dunked a ball after a bounce pass from the side of the backboard. Ross then nearly trampled a ball boy during his next dunk attempt as he jumped over him for a jam.
The people have spoken, and once the show was over, 58% of fans handed the 2013 Slam Dunk title to Ross. He became the third Raptor to win the contest. Carter and Evans are the other two.
The highlights look great in slow motion, but the league needs to do its best to bring back the NBA's savior, Lebron James, to pump some life into one of the NBA's most exciting and anticipated events of the season.
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