Everyone knew that Zach
LaVine was going to bring the heat for the Dunk Contest in Toronto. He was the defending
champion — yes, at 20 years old — and his teases leading up to the
event were amazing. LaVine won the dang thing again in extra rounds — the first to
win back-to-back titles since Nate Robinson. He somehow had enough
power in his legs and ideas in his brain to top Aaron Gordon, who used a hoverboarding
mascot as a partner. Gordon and LaVine nearly tied, but eventually
the Timberwolves’ young gunner prevailed with these Air Jordan-esque slams. I’m
not going to start with his first dunk only because while it was
amazing, it wasn’t even close to the most amazing one, which is tough to
believe, but it’s true.
For LaVine’s second
jam, he slammed home an alley-oop FROM THE FREE THROW LINE. You’ve seen Michael
Jordan and some others in past dunk contests dunk from the free throw line. No
one has thrown down an alley-oop from that far away. This was only the
beginning. All right. OK. Then, oh look, he dunked from the free throw line
again — this time with a windmill windup. LaVine is no joke. After his two
unbelievable free throw line dunks, he decided to flip things the other way
around and approached the rim from BEHIND the basket. To cap it off, he goes
back to the free throw line dunking and adds the flair of going between his
legs. So LaVine dunked from the free throw line with an alley-oop dunk, a windmill
dunk and a between-the-legs dunk. I don’t know what’s real any more. I don’t
think I can see straight at this point.
It’s not just
impressive that he could execute those, it’s impressive he had the legs to last
that many rounds and leap from the free throw line on his FINAL DUNK, even if
he is 20 years old. Notice the captions in the Vines by NBA on TNT say “final
round” more than once — that’s because they kept adding rounds. It was
legendary, and I think we can all agree that after several years of obscurity,
the NBA Dunk Contest is alive and well. Long live Zach LaVine. Update: LaVine
posted on Instagram after the contest saying that he is dedicating his dunk
championship to Flip Saunders, Minnesota’s president of basketball operations
and coach who
passed away in October.
