Orlando Magic forward Aaron Gordon slam dunks the ball during the National Basketball Association all-star skills competition in Toronto on Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016.
Advertisement
The dunk contest was obviously fantastic and what everyone will be talking about for the next few days but the rest of All-Star Saturday was pretty awesome as well.
Nobody flew higher than Minnesota Timberwolves, Zach LaVine in the Dunk Contest on Saturday, February Aaron Gordon soared over h13 in Toronoto.
Zach LaVine agreed. “In the game, it’s nearly a little more power”, he said. “Just try to keep getting better and better and keep accomplishing things that are instilled in me and my goals”. Not in practice. Not at that playgrounds back home in Seattle. He’s the first player since Jason Richardson in 2002 to win both the Rising Stars MVP and the Dunk Contest. But the potential rivalry between him and Gordon is reminiscent of that between Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins, who Tweeted his own assessment of the matchup: “The dunk contest is back!!!” That is because Gordon did something we’ve never seen before when he jumped over the Magic’s mascot, put the ball under his legs, and dunked.
The freakishly athletic Timberwolves guard knew he had to do something new to top his performance from last season – “I’ve been practicing”, he said last week – and didn’t disappoint. Like half the dunks we did were like professional dunker dunks, and it takes them four or five times to try it and make it, and we did it on the first try. “It was ridiculous, man”. But once the contest was whittled to two contestants, Gordon put on a show every bit LaVine’s equal. Like they say in Boxing: To beat the champion, you usually have to knock him out. “The bounce crown goes to you [Aaron]”. I went to my Facebook, I had a lot of people that left me messages.
Later, Gordon threw down perhaps the night’s best dunk: a 360 windmill with the ball plucked off his team’s rotating mascot.
Gordon however pulled off the most memorable dunks of the night with some help from the Magic’s mascot. Gordon’s 47 points in the second sudden-death round was not enough, as LaVine finished off the competition with a 50-point between the legs dunk from just inside the free-throw line. “We would have been here all night”.
Advertisement
I’m not going to start with his first dunk only because while it was awesome, it wasn’t even close to the most wonderful one, which is tough to believe, but it’s true.
