DubaLakers wrote:I'm ok with him winning it, but I think the whole thing is shady guys to be honest. Nba puts out a press release BEFORE the contest for some kids benefit and says join the 2011 slam dunk champion Blake Griffin. Then he jumps over a Kia the NBA's sponsered car, then he gets a Kia contract and a commercial. Was this thing predetermined?
From what I have read, he first said that he wanted to dunk over a car a month and a half ago. He was told that it was fine. Kia sponsors both the NBA and the Clippers, so that was a no brainer for the league even if another car would have been sexier. There was still red tape to get through since the Dunk Contest is sponsored by Sprite, so they had to work that out to where all parties involved were satisfied.
I can't really speak out on the rumored press release. If Blake made it to the 2nd round, he was pretty much guaranteed to win, because he's the biggest name of the competitors. It would be the same thing if Kobe or LeBron were in the finals. There would be an unfair advantage going in and their competitor would have to go above and beyond to have a fair shot. DeRozan had some nice dunks and could have received higher points. Ibaka's free-throw line dunk should have been scored higher. I liked 2 of McGee's dunks (1st & 3rd), but the others were weak imo.
One thing that I didn't like is that Ibaka was given extra time due to set stuffed animal dunk whereas Blake had time taken away from him while the cameramen were setting up before his 2nd dunk. He still may not have made it, but he could have at least had 1 more attempt.
Unfortunately, we don't have any practice footage of all the contestants. Had DeRozan advanced to the second round, he should have done that dunk and he would have easily won imo.