2009 NBA Dunk Contest

when: Saturday Feb 14th. 2009, 8-11 pm

Who:

Dwight Howard (2008 Champion, 2007 3rd place) - Orlando Magic
Nate Robinson (2006 Champion, 2008 Runner Up) - New York Knicks
J.R. Smith (2005 3rd place) - Denver Nuggets
Rudy Fernandez (Fan Vote Winner) - Portland Trailblazers
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Okay, for lame-0s like me who are doing nothing on Valentines day, we can look forward to the NBA dunk contest, I probably am more than most normal people. This years dunk contest has the potential to be pretty great, but it most probably wont be.

I can lay the blame square on two things: the infusion of props and gimmicks in the dunk contest in the last few years, and Rudy Fernandez.

Rudy Fernandez still makes me angry. Judging from YouTube videos he is extremely nonathletic, he barely gets his head to the net when he goes up for a dunk. He is only in the dunk contest because he won the fan vote. Of the three NBA players who were contestants in the fan vote contest, he was the least deserving candidate. Joe Alexander was clearly the best dunker out of the 3, he even hit his head on the rim in a video to try and drum up support. However, because europeans and other global NBA fans blindly went with the foriegn guy, we are stuck with sucky Fernadez.

Howard, even though he has the potential to be a great dunker, even though he sometimes relies on the gimmick. His last two dunk contests have been half gimmick, half awesome. Overall, he is a very good contestant.

JR Smith is a straight up balling contestant. The two televised dunk contests he has previousley participate in showed him as a creative, ungimmicky, high jumping dunk powerhouse. He was the first ever to do a behind the back dunk in an NBA dunk contest (2005) and he even tried to do a 360 behind the back in the 2004 Mcdonalds dunk contest. However, this guy is like 6'6" and he isnt the super highest jumping guy ever so I really don't know if he has what it takes to d something truly insane in the dunk contest, we will see.

Nate Robinson is incredibly short, but he doesnt really rely on gimmicks either. In the two dunk contest he has been in, he has really brought it. He tried to do dunk I never thought a short person would ever do. He missed an amazing off the back board 2 foot take off east bay in the 2006 contest. In addition, there is a YouTube video floating around of him doing a 2 foot take off east bay 180 from out out of bounds (although there is disagreement on whether the rim is 10 feet).

CONCLUSION:

Fernandez is almost certainly a write-off contestant in this years contest.

We can only hope that Robinson and Smith don't feel pressured by Howard's past success to do very gimmicky, overly showey dunks.

Here is hoping that this contest is awesome.