How to fix the NBA slam dunk contest
The All-Star Saturday NBA Slam Dunk Contest used to be one of the most amazing athletic spectacles known to man. Graceful giants would fly through the air, live weightless for a few moments, and then smash the ball through the goal with the force of 1000 pneumatic hammers.
But every few years the Dunk Contest gets boring. We’ve seen everything. Seeing another 360-behind-the-back-off-the-glass-through-the-leg-windmill, even if impossible for the normal man, is yawn-inducing.
We all kind of hate it. But we all watch it. Because we are all hopeful that we’ll be transported back to the year 2000 and we’ll get to watch Vince put his entire arm through the rim. But alas, its 2022, and we’re stuck watching Greg Anthony’s son miss dunks.
But there may be some simple fixes, and all the NBA has to do is look to the genre of television that has made watching people be competent at high skilled things fun to watch- reality competition shows. I am proud to say I have seen almost every episode of the 13 seasons of Ink Master, I will always watch the Great British Bakeoff, and I will watch 16 people compete to see who is the best bar-b-que-er, glassblower or lawn mower. The reasons for this are simple. As a human being, we love to watch people be competent. It’s a thing. We also love DRAMA…Love it.
The dunk contest has competent people in it every year. But every year it lacks DRAMA. So, I made a short list of ways that the NBA can add in DRAMA to the Dunk Contest and make it magical again:
- Add a team element. Do two teams of three. In the first round the teams battle each other. The winning team goes to the final round, and the those dunkers compete against each other. Split the teams along something arbitrary. Examples: Under vs. Over 6'6", Over 35 vs. Under 25, American vs. Foreign, Played in College vs. Didn’t. If we have teams, you instantly raise the DRAMA factor. A dunker’s teammates will hype him up. And the energy of the event will be better.
- Add in tighter constraints. Creativity comes from constraints. When left to their own devices people will attempt dunks that far outside their skill set. If we add in constraints, it also makes the judging seem fairer. Some constraints that would help:
a. No partner dunks. Only a dunker can move the ball. The partner dunks are the most missed dunks anyways. Let them die.
b. If you jump off the ground, that counts as a dunk attempt. Period. You only get two attempts per round.
c. All dunks must happen within 120 seconds. The Venn Diagram of great NBA players and great NBA actors is four people deep (Jesus Shuttlesworth, Rick Fox, Kareem, and Chris Paul from the State Farm commercials). Having dunkers act out a story is always cheesy. And never the good kind of cheesy. No one ever wanted to see Dwight Howard put on a superman cape. Except Dwight Howard.
3. Get more popular players. No offense to Juan Tosquano-Anderson (who surely walks on water in the yay-area and has never paid for a meal in Oakland), but the casual NBA fan wants to see people they know dunk the basketball. How do you get more popular players? Shame them into it! We reduced the power of the fan vote for all-star voting. Let’s make the dunk contestants a product PURELY of the fan vote. Players can opt-out. But I would love to see a weird write-in campaign to get Alex Caruso in the dunk contest. He wouldn’t say no.
4. Add a mystery dunker. Each team gets to bring in one mystery dunker. This could be a retired NBA player, a WNBA player, or someone from the celebrity game. C’mon, tell me you wouldn’t want to see 40+ year old Vince Carter, or Britney Griener, or Kevin Hart in the dunk contest? (Also, I really do think if you told Kevin Hart today, “Yo Kev, you’re going to be in the dunk contest next year,” that the maniacal little man would quit everything he’s doing, hire a dunk coach, wear jump soles 12 hours a day, and actually figure out how to dunk the ball.)
5. Add DRAMA with two exhibition style “GRUDGE MATCH” dunks. Settle NBA beef in the dunk contest. One dunk each. Worst dunker of the two has to publicly apologize for his wrongs. Get me Dwyane Wade vs. Aaron Gordon. Or Draymond Green vs. KD. Or Grayson Allen vs. anyone.
6. Improve judging. The dunk contest should only be judged on three criteria: 1. Creativity (Did they do something I haven’t seen?), 2. Hangtime (Did they float in the air like a genie on a rug?), and the most forgotten element of the Dunk Contest 3. “THUNK” Thunk is the sound the rim makes when you dunk it with the full force of your power. It’s almost everyone’s favorite part of any dunk. Finally, have one expert judge give a score of 1–10 for their selected criteria (2023 Dunk Contest Judge Wishlist: 1. Creativity — Nate Robinson, 2. Hangtime- Zach Lavine, 3. THUNK — Domonique Wilkins).
7. Add a LITERAL cash prize. $1 million to the winner in $1 bills.
8. Make people wish for a tie. In case of a tie in the final, the two final dunkers must each dunk from as far away from the rim as possible. The person who dunks from furthest away wins. The free throw line dunk is already one of the most exciting dunks. If you make this the required final dunk to win, then people would go nuts.
Ok. Those are all my ideas for now. People thought the Elam ending would suck. Those people were wrong. I think any (or all) of these changes would make the dunk contest better. I am not wrong.