Posted February 16, 2014
The East won the Dunk Contest in a blowout, ending the event abruptly. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE/Getty Images)
NEW ORLEANS — Worst. Fears. Confirmed.
As soon as the Slam Dunk Contest’s new format and rules were announced two weeks ago, it was immediately clear that there was a decent chance the event could end in disaster. A bad fate wasn’t guaranteed but, as The Point Forward noted at the time, it was a strong possibility.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened at the Smoothie King Center on Saturday night. The 2014 Dunk Contest will go down as confusing, boring, underwhelming, frustrating and — worst of all — a logistical mess that undercut a very strong group of dunkers. So often over the years, weak fields have failed to live up to the excitement and hype of the Dunk Contest ideal; here, the Dunk Contest’s format totally failed its participants by lessening the impact of their achievements and bringing an abrupt end to the action just as things were getting interesting.
The new rules — which included a two-round format that began with a “freestyle” team-based opening round and a head-to-head, East vs. West closing “battle” round — seemed to be making a series of calculated trade-offs.
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Instead of trusting the dunkers to shine, the contest’s structure worked to minimize the impact made by a series of missed dunks. If you repeatedly missed in the “freestyle” round, your teammates would simply follow up a few seconds later with tries of their own. If you repeatedly missed in the “battle” round, you would almost certainly be quickly eliminated by your head-to-head competitor. Here, the new rules attempted to trade tradition for improved flow.
The contest also insisted on fully incorporating the conference vs. conference format used in other All-Star Saturday events, rather than keeping the focus on the individual. This included crowning all three members of the winning conference as “champions” and ending the contest when the winning conference won three “battles,” as opposed to a final showdown round featuring the best dunkers, regardless of conference. That process was then supplemented with a “Dunker of the Night” award to be determined by a fan vote. Here, the new rules traded tradition and the Dunk Contest’s well-established mano-a-mano vibe for a conference face-off format with no obvious benefits and a recognition for the best dunker that felt tacked on as opposed to the main attraction.
The new scoring format also deemphasized the role of the judges considerably. Rather than scoring dunks on a 1-to-10 scale and adding them up, a process that has the potential to be inconsistent and controversial, the judges faced a simpler decision this year, needing only to vote for the East or the West. Here, the trade-off was the tradition and excitement of the old scoring rules and system, and the mystique of the coveted “50″ dunk, for a streamlined process that should reward the most deserving competitors.
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And finally, the format ensured that no individual dunker would be required to do more than, say, six or seven dunks at the absolute most: roughly three or four dunks in the “freestyle” round and then an absolute maximum of three dunks in the “battle” round. Realistically , most of the dunkers could be expected to do two dunks in the “battle” round at most; as it turned out, no dunker did more than one “battle” dunk on Saturday. Back in the 1980s, by comparison, dunkers that made the final round would perform eight dunks along the way. Here, the intended trade-off was quality over quantity, with the hope that less would be more because all the participants would bring their best material out in the “battle” round, knowing they would be eliminated if they didn’t.
Most of these trade-offs, with the exception of the ill-advised conference vs. conference idea, were well-intentioned, at least when considered individually. When combined, though, some serious questions were apparent immediately. What happens if one conference is way stronger than the other? Will the contest’s shortened length prove to be satisfying? What happens if the two best dunkers are from the same conference? Why even hold a Dunk Contest if there’s not a single, undisputed, overall champion? And why devalue the “champion” tag by giving it to three people and handing the winner a clunky “Dunker of the Night” title?
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Again, these questions weren’t guaranteed to become major problems, but they were glaring enough issues that the contest’s rules never should have seen the light of day as is. As it turns out, all of those questions turned into huge problems on Saturday, and the result was a mostly lifeless crowd that seemed dumbfounded when it found out that the contest — just as it was finally gaining some momentum — was now over.
Wizards guard John Wall wound up taking home “Dunker of the Night” honors as he led the East to a 3-0 rout of the West. His final dunk involved jumping over a mascot, double-clutching and throwing down a two-handed reverse dunk, a sequence that earned a “50″ from The Point Forward. But that slam, the night’s best, was not followed by a face-off with Raptors guard Terrence Ross, the defending champion, or Pacers forward Paul George, both of whom impressed with through-the-legs dunks in the “battle” round. That slam also wasn’t followed by any additional dunks from Wall, who had been electric during the “freestyle” round too.
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