Gordon, the rookie forward from the Orlando Magic, had earned a 47 on his final attempt, when he lowered the ball toward his knees and bringing it back up with two hands for a reverse dunk.
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LaVine finally won after extra dunks were needed, joining Jordan, Jason Richardson and Nate Robinson as the only back-to-back winners of the dunk title.
And time and time again, Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns gave us priceless reaction, after priceless reaction.
But people just wanted to see Bryant play, not necessarily play well. It’s kind of very quick; it happens quick.
He ended his remarks by saying, “Thank you so much – and now I’ve got to go get loose”. “But at that point I had exhausted all my options”.
If Gordon couldn’t upstage LaVine, then LaVine had to do it himself. “I’m fortunate to be on a team that has a winning record and is playing really well, and a lot of these guys [in the Rising Stars Game] don’t have that opportunity and this is their chance to establish themselves”. The 35-year-old Californian, who was beaten in the first rounds of the Auckland Classic and Australian Open last month, won the $500,000 hard court tournament in Kaohsiung without dropping a set.
It was great to see the Nuggets involved in All-Star weekend, now they just need a player or two in the Sunday game down the road.
It was a spectacular night at Air Canada Centre.
Emmanuel Mudiay competed in the Skill Challenge, but lost his head-to-head match up against the Boston Celtics’ Isaiah Thomas. “This is bigger than me”. “This is bigger than me”. In a normal year, his dunks would have been plenty good enough for him to run away with the trophy, but this was no ordinary contest. “We would have been here all night”.
“I was just hoping Zach was going to miss, and it wasn’t going to happen”.
“You can practice dunks but if you don’t have the bounce”, he said, “you can’t practice bounce”.
Zach LaVine saved his most powerful move for after the slam-dunk contest.
“Me and him are now like best friends”, Gordon said.
2K, can we get these dunks in National Basketball Association 2K17 somehow? “It was insane. In my opinion, yes [it was the best contest of all time]”. He made his All-Star debut in NY in 1998, a game also remembered for Michael Jordan’s last with the Chicago Bulls.
For now, it’s time to turn the attention at All-Star weekend back where it started: Kobe Bryant and the rest of the NBA’s best. While both equally impressive with their deft shooting performances, Thompson, in his Anta KT1, would top Curry and his Under Armour Curry Two, 27-23. John Wall added 22 points.
George had 11 of the East’s first 25 points by making three 3-pointers.
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Bosh leads Miami by scoring at 19.1 points per game. Durant and Davis each had 10 points in the first quarter.
