It's A Sham-Dunk Contest

To say the NBA's Slam Dunk Contest has become a bit tedious to watch live, is an understatement.

It has been a few years - on and off, I can't keep track - since I hunkered down for the event live, not just cherry picking the highlites the next day on SportsCenter.

And boy, you can cut the awkward moments with a knife!

Credit the TNT crew for not being league shills. You knew Barkley was going to be brutally honest, and it wasn't two dunks in that the guys were essentially saying: "This sucks!"

I believe at one point, Kenny Smith said he's done all of these dunks himself - in REC LEAGUE PLAY!

I held up my own personal "10" card on that one!

Yes, there is a certain bit of nostalgic wishful thinking about the dunk contest. We all remember Jordan from the free throw line, 'Nique and Spudd, etc. etc. We then selectively throw out all the garbage in between like when Kenny Walker won it or Fred Jones from the Pacers (huh?), or we felt sorry for the white guy and gave it to Brent Barry.

After Kobe won in 1997 in New York, the consensus had become: "There are no more dunks to be dunked. The contest, is officially out of business!"

The lockout killed the entire All-Star weekend the following year, but when all was right again in David Stern's travelling hardwood circus in 2000, Vince Carter did some super-electric-funktastic shit to win it, and we all thought - alright, here... we... go!

Now that Nate Robinson has won it a third time - and don't get me wrong, at his size, he IS awesome - perhaps we should put it back on ice for a year.

LeBron is a big pussy for backing out of his "pledge" last year to be in it (finally!) this year. Now you wonder, is ever going to be in it? The only thing that makes me want to give 'Bron a pass, is how re-donk-ulous his IN-GAME dunks are!

I think 'Bron should have just submitted a highlight reel of his 15 feet in the air, throw it down so hard it bounces into the 5th row, watch me fly into the picture like a condor, dunks.



We would all sit there and watch the jumbo-tron with the lights out, and when it was over, the lights would come up, LeBron could take the mic courtside with his palms up and say: "Any questions?"

Nah. Give him the trophy, and tell DeMar DeRozen to go home.

Unless that is, there still ARE some new funky dunks out there to be dunked. My question is this: has anybody bothered to make a detailed year-by-year, player-by-player, spreadsheet list of ALL the dunks that have been tried and executed.

A database of dunk, if you will.

Now there's a list I'd like to see.