Hurry up, I'm waiting for the flowers to thank you.
In the dunk contest, Rockets rising star Jarren Green was once regarded as the most potent contender for the championship, ESPN's 14 expert pre-game predictions, 12 chose Green, 1 chose Topping, and one chose Cole Anthony, Toscano Anderson did not even get the favor of any expert reporters, resulting in Jaren Green's first round of dunks in a row of failures.
There is still a time limit for the landlord to play cards, but Jalen Green is constantly failing, testing everyone's patience. Several judges showed awkward smiles, O'Neill on the sidelines, Pierce had a livid face, and even some of the audience were too bored to play with their mobile phones.
Some say it's the boringest dunk contest, and there's no dunk contest after LaVine and Gordon. It has also been suggested that future dunk contests can be considered canceled, and that previous highlights are more interesting than this. Dunk contests have always been a big hit during All-Star Weekend, but in the past few years, without celebrity faces, young people have been unable to bring more novelty. It is estimated that everyone wants to know, can the much-anticipated dunk contest still break the game?
Why star rookies are reluctant to participate
The Knicks' Obi-Tor equal won the dunk contest, and if you are not a Knicks fan and your attention to the NBA is not at the ashes level, you may not even know, what is the origin of this young man, he really comes from the NBA?
We can look at what level the NBA dunk contest champions in history are, before there are human movie essence, flying jordan, UFO Carter, Peter Pan Kobe, and then there are wall brother Wall, Lavin, Mitchell, at least can be regarded as the core of the team. And Obi-Topping is basically at the same level as Hamidu Diallo in 2019, taking the dunk championship, and you still can't remember who he is.
Superstars are reluctant to participate in the dunk contest, and perhaps everyone can understand. After all, most of the league's stars may have been in the league for several seasons when they became famous. At that time, they no longer had the vigor of the newborn calves who were not afraid of tigers when they first entered the alliance. At this time, if you are compared with this group of boys in their early 19s and early 20s, on the one hand, you may not be able to compete, on the other hand, if you lose, you will never be able to hang on to your face.
Anyway, LeBron James is like this, when he was young, he hesitated to participate, and when he was older, it was naturally impossible to compete with a bunch of recruits.
Of course, there are also some players who are really worried about injuries, dunk competition is more technically difficult than that, crotch 360 or something, that test is the human body's limit of endurance. Everyone is the star of each team, in case the warm-up is not sufficient, or the soles of the feet are not standing, because if this kind of thing is injured in the dunk contest, it is not a loss of the wife and the fold.
However, to the surprise of many people, many young people are reluctant to participate in the dunk contest today, such as Morant of the Grizzlies, Zion of the Pelicans, and Cuminga of the Warriors. They are all physically outstanding, talented, as long as they participate, they feel that they are champions.
But the question is, they don't seem to have that much motivation for this project? The NBA's dunk contest doesn't have an outrageously high bonus, and if you participate, it's likely to make you bear the name of dunk for a long time, such as Gordon and Griffin before.
Mention the word dunk, the first reaction of everyone may be that the physical fitness is exciting, but the shooting may be almost meaningful. In today's small ball era, unless your body is perverted to the level of the alphabet brother, there is no three points, how can you continue to mix.
Of course, there is another factor for young people not to participate in the three-point contest, and that is the judges. The Grizzlies' star, Morant, refused to participate in the dunk contest because of this factor. After all, the dunk contest is not figure skating, freestyle skiing, there is no strict scoring system, and where there are people, there will naturally be subjective factors. Wade's 9 points not only affected the ownership of that year's dunk contest, but also may also have a profound impact on the development of the entire dunk contest.
Nothing new about the dunk contest?
If you want to use four words to describe this year's dunk contest, it is estimated that everyone's feeling will be, what a thing. After the game, the TV screen gave the camera to Wade in the commentary seat, and the Flash also played the old terrier, reversing the 9 points in his hand and replacing it with 6 points, which caused everyone to laugh.
Wade did discourage some players from going to the dunk contest, but Aaron Gordon and LaVine were indeed an important reason why the young rookies were reluctant to participate in the dunk contest again. After today's game, Jazz star Donovan Mitchell posted a joke, "Brother Lavin, Gordon, you messed up the dunk contest, what about the rest of us?" ”
Mitchell's words actually have some truth, with the development of the NBA, the player training system is becoming more and more scientific, and the most important thing in the league today may be the trapeze artist. LaVine and Aaron Gordon have shown the physical limits of NBA players to the fullest. From the perspective of technical difficulty alone, the dunk contest has reached a bottleneck, and it can even be said to be a ceiling. It is difficult to make a qualitative leap, so nowadays, the dunk contest, the most played tricks by the players, is still a tribute to the seniors.
There is no breakthrough in technical difficulty, in fact, NBA players can also think of some creativity, when Howard dressed up as Superman, Blake Griffin leaped into the car, are classic scenes in NBA history, and when it comes to creativity, this year's dunk contest, what you can remember may be Cole Anthony changing shoes, Jalen Green hanging a mobile phone around his neck. In today's era of highly developed social media, it's easy to find some new ideas for dunk contests.
But one of the important reasons why the recent dunk contests have not been presented is that people do not really regard the dunk contest as a game that must be won. Many non-professional league dunks often post their amazing dunks on social media, but that may be a move they have been working out for a long time, and in countless failures, they have recorded the most perfect side, and their opponents are not NBA-level dunks, but themselves.
NBA dunk contest, just a few minutes, many players choose to participate in the dunk contest is a temporary intention. And in this era, dunks have long been not an essential weapon for NBA players, rookie season, Griffin warm-up and dunks with Jordan Jr., has been criticized by many media reporters, and that was more than a decade ago. In today's league, after more rookies enter the league, the first thing is to hone their three-point weapons.
Is there a way for the NBA to break the game?
After watching this year's dunk contest, everyone's feeling is actually that there is no need to continue to do it. No big names, no novelty, and now it's lost competitiveness, and when everything is all negative, it's time to change.
How to make the dunk contest more attractive, first of all, you have to have traffic stars. Who is the traffic star of the NBA, that is naturally the first-line star of the league like James and Curry. Just imagine, if it is James vs. Durant, Curry vs. Paul, even if they just do a simple two-handed buckle action, I believe it will be more attractive than Topin and Xiaojuan to a big windmill.
So how do you get the league's top stars to play? Someone once proposed to increase the bonus, but the top NBA superstars, the annual salary is basically more than 3,000 US dollars, people will still care about your little money. The magician once said that he was willing to pay $1 million in prize money to let James participate in the dunk contest, and the old Zhan Mo naturally laughed and said nothing. At this time, what the alliance needs is the radical method, and shortly after the beginning of "I Am a Singer", they were invited by Qi Qin in this way.
Of course, if a star of James and Durant's level participates in the dunk contest, then their opponents must also be the top of the league. You let James duel Topin, win disgraceful, lose shame, people naturally will not go. If it is Curry dunking against Paul, I believe that the two old jianghu will only enjoy the game, and no one will really care who is the champion of the big game.
If the top superstars can't be invited, then the league should pay more attention to those talented rookies, and increasing the bonus will obviously increase the temptation of rookies to participate. Nowadays, the league's rookie contract, the annual salary is generally more than 1 million US dollars, if the dunk contest champion is also promoted to this level, naturally there will be many young people seriously.
Of course, jury reform may also be an important reason. The year Wade scored 9 points, many people had very big doubts about the lineup of judges. In the eyes of many people, at least you have taken the dunk king to be eligible to score there. Of course, it is also a way to improve the scoring standard and eliminate the phenomenon of 9 points like gymnastics and diving, but in this way, the dunk contest becomes serious, and it seems to lose the meaning of entertainment.