Even though I rarely post stuff about sports on the blog, I had to put up a quick post about how the Orlando Magic’s Dwight Howard was robbed in tonight’s Slam Dunk contest. The Slam Dunk contest is a part of the NBA’s All-Star weekend and it came down to the reigning champion Dwight Howard taking on Nate Robinson of the New York Knicks. Robinson’s big dunk was him “jumping over” Howard on his way to the slam, but anyone who looks at the damn tape can see that Robinson was about a foot and a half away from actually jumping over the guy. In fact, he landed somewhere on Howard’s shoulders and had to push himself off from there.
It was completely unimpressive.
Oh, and watching the Slam Dunk contest tonight reminded me of one of the reasons why I hate watching the NBA these days. The commentators are horrendous! I don’t know who was doing the play by play, but when Robinson came out in his green Knicks uniform with the green socks and the green shoes, the commentators lost all self-control and constantly made references to Lex Luthor and kryptonite. Why? Because Howard’s nickname is Superman. Get it? The other guy wore green and was competing against the guy nicknamed Superman. Get it? Green? Kryptonite? Makes Superman not super?
I was mildly amused at the references for the first thirty seconds, but after a few minutes of the mindless babbling it easily became the most annoying thing that I heard all week. Seriously – shut up. We get it. We’re not stupid.
Anyway, I don’t watch the NBA any more and I haven’t in years. But I have to admit that I was impressed by Dwight Howard’s performance tonight. Good job!
Actually i think he robbed himself. He would have won if he just thought about the order of his dunks. He should have used the foul line dunk in the first round and ended the night with the 12 foot dunk. Overall he had higher scores than nate but when u leave it up to the fans, they tend to vote based on the last dunks they saw not the entire competition.
Surely the commentary isn’t the big reason you stopped watching NBA programming. If that’s true then you would have shut off TNA a loooong time ago! I’ll take cheesy analogies over two hours of being screamed at any day of the week!
The reason is the fan voting started at the beginning of the final round, so for those people voting, he wanted to seal it up in the first round. But it backfired, Robinson’s dunks sucked, jumping on someones back, anyone could do that.
I dont think Nate deserves to have 2 Slam dunk contest wins. I have no idea how he won against Iguodala in 2006, and now he manages to slide buy Howard by a mere 4%. This guy is pissing me off!!
billy – I would agree with that. Howard should have better arranged his series of dunks.
Spades – I’m just about done clearing out my DVR of the last SIX episodes of Impact. I still like TNA, but I could smack the shit out of Mike Tenay at this point!
Nathan – The fan voting system should be looked at again because Howard was robbed. It’s a shame.
JR – I hear ya! I’m pulling for Howard again next year!
AH! It’s great to see you talk hoops!!! I encourage more sports posts in the future, and NOT JUST ABOUT THE DAMN GIANTS!
Here’s the deal. Dwight should have used his “12-foot basket” (which wasn’t even 11′ tall everyone is reporting) dunk as his last dunk, but he couldn’t rearrange the order of the dunks because there are certain rules for the different rounds (when you must use a teammate, when you must use a prop, etc).
The only reason Howard lost wasn’t so much Nate’s dunk over him, it was Howard’s poor attempt at dunking from the free throw line. It’s been done so many times and so much better by others, that it probably turned voters off. Nate’s other dunks were very creative in my opinion and he deserved it. The whole contest was nowhere as entertaining as last year’s though! The one dunk Howard did (off the glass) was spectacular and probably would have won him the competition had it not been in the first round. But speaking of first round, didn’t you think that Rudy Fernandez dunk (with Pau Gasol) was amazing? I mean it took them 24054 attempts to get it which is what killed it, but for me it was by far the most impressive one!
First, don’t hate on the Giants. They’re the best team in football (F Pittsburgh)!
And I agree that Dwight’s arrangement of dunks definitely hurt his chances at winning. And yes, I thought the Fernandez dunk was ridiculous – it’s a shame he didn’t get further.
But was it just me or did the announcing absolutely suck? I mean it was HORRIBLE!
What’s even scarier is that since I watched the dunk contest, I’ve thought about possibly watching a game or two…
haha I don’t like Pittsburgh myself!
Yup, you’re right, the announcing was horrible, but for a reason! Because they’re missing Barkley this year (due to his DUI arrest, he took time off and will be back this week actually), Kenny Smith was trying way too hard. He was over the top, and it wasn’t pretty. Plus you have to remember, they were all trying to have fun instead of be good at what they were doing, but it did end up sucking majorly. I agree!
I really hope you give the NBA a chance. It’s not the same league in a lot of ways. Last season was so good, and this year is even better. There’s great basketball being played, but the main change is the new generation that’s come in. Guys like Howard, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Kevin Durant, Brandon Roy, and the like. They’re all good kids that did college ball, and when clubs were drafting them, all were thought of as “high class and character” guys. It shows because we stopped having the random NBA player arrest every year. Oh and speaking of announcing, try to catch the rare ABC games (ABC shows the Playoffs and the Finals, but also on rare occasions throughout the year, the biggest games of the season) since they mostly always guarantee good basketball and they have the trio of Mark Breen-Mark Jackson-Jeff Van Gundy doing the announcing. These guys are awesome!!! They’re the J.R./Jerry Lawler of basketball. It works perfect because they have strong chemistry (Van Gundy has coached Jackson before), and we have a great play-by-play (Breen) matches up with a great former player (Jackson), and an entertaining guy who’s coached for a while and ended his coaching stint recently (Van Gundy), so we get three awesome perspectives while their chemistry is strong. I am sure you’ll get a kick of them! I often times tune in for non-Lakers games because of them! That’s saying something!
Joe…. FYI The Giants suck…. Watch a Good team like the Redskins!!
Eddie – I’m thinking of watching another game or two. I just haven’t had the time to even think about it, really. However, if the new crew really are “high class,” then I might give it a shot. Something about watching guys get into fights that span up through the crowd…not fun to watch.
Dave – The REDSKINS!?! HA! Not a chance!