Deron Williams won the Skills Challenge. Jason Kapono won the Three Point Contest.
Dwight Howard ended up winning the Slam Dunk Contest in a strangely overrated performance. I'm not necessarily saying he shouldn't have won, but it wasn't as good as it may have appeared.
On his first dunk, from behind the back of the basket, he threw the ball off of the back of the backboard, caught it in the air, ducked his head under the backboard, and glided to the basket for the slam. It was pretty good. Everyone went wild. But Andre Iguodala did a similar dunk, except his was more impressive. Iverson threw the ball off of the backboard and Iguodala caught it, and glided past the backboard and past the rim until he threw down a one-handed reverse jam. You can check it out here. Iguodala is shorter than Howard, an advantage that Dwight had over all of the other competitors.
The next dunk was the famed Superman Dunk. Did anybody else notice that he didn't actually dunk the ball. Receiving a pass from teammate Jameer Nelson, donning a Superman outfit cape and all, Howard amazingly jumped up and caught the ball, but couldn't get to the bucket and had to throw the ball threw the hoop. It was a remarkable play, but not a dunk. It shouldn't have counted.
His third dunk was the best of the night. He did the old Spud Webb, throwing the ball in front of the basket. Then he played patty cake with the ball off of the backboard, grabbed the ball one-handed and threw it down. It was the signature dunk of this contest. His final dunk was nice and creative, but nothing too great.
The only dunk that came close to the Patty Cake dunk was Gerald Green's Birthday Cake Dunk. With a lit cupcake on the back of the rim, Green rose up, blew out the candle and had enough body control not to knock the cupcake off. Green's other unbelievable dunk was when he jumped, put the ball through his legs and sent it home wearing only socks on his feet.
All in all, it was an entertaining and well-executed dunk contest. It was unfortunate that the crowd started booing Dr. J when he was explain that it was a closer contest than more people assumed. Ah well, I've always known there are plenty of idiots in the world.
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