Who Really Won The Dunk Contest

A quick shoutout to Gordon and Levine for putting on an absolute show this weekend.

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First of all, bravo again to those two dudes. I mean bra-fucking-vo. It’s almost impossible these days to truly blow people’s minds with a dunk. Between the fringe D-Leaguers like James Flight White and the freak athlete professional dunkers like that dude in the jeans last night, we’ve seen almost everything that (we think) is humanly possible. The bar has just been set so high by guys who only dunk for a living, that you almost don’t expect an NBA players to keep up.

That’s what made Saturday night that much more impressive. Here you have two real NBA players–two young, talented, starting-caliber players–trading dunks back and forth that we’ve never seen before. These guys didn’t just wow the audience, they wowed their piers in a way we haven’t seen since Vince put on that show in 01. LOOK AT THESE FACES

When You Had A Sub The Day Before And The Teacher Starts Reading Off The Names Of The Kids Who Gave Them Trouble https://t.co/3H8p4xEh0R—
ChanceTheFapper (@Bakersman_Joe) February 15, 2016

Now as for the actual contest, I still can’t shake the feeling that Gordon got robbed. Alright, he didn’t get robbed necessarily, since the limitations of the scoring system basically prevented the judges from rewarding one “50” Dunk over another “50” Dunk. I can’t blame them for scoring some of Levine’s dunks as 50’s, even when they knew Gordon’s was better. At the end of the day, almost every dunk we saw from the two of them was a 50 in the context of this scoring system. There just isn’t really a good way to score this.

If you go by boxing style, round-by-round scoring…

Round 1: Levine 10-8
Round 2: Gordon 10-9
Round 3: Gordon 10-9
Round 4: Gordon 10-9
Round 5: Gordon 10-9
Round 6: Levine 10-9

…I would score it 57-56 Gordon. Although you could easily talk me into a 3rd round draw (the 360 windmills) which would then make the whole thing a draw.

Or you could rank the dunks…

1) Gordon’s 4th
2) Gordon’s 2nd
3) Levine’s 6th
4) Gordon’s 3rd
5) Levine’s 3rd
6) Levine’s 1st
7) Gordon’s 5th
8) Levine’s 4th
9) Gordon’s 6th
10) Levine’s 2nd
11) Levine’s 5th
12) Gordon’s 1st

…which would again, lead you to a Gordon win. But even I don’t totally know if I agree with my own rankings there.

Or, from a straight feel standpoint, you could base it off who’s performance you’ll remember most. And that again leads me to Gordon. Because more than anything, those three mascot dunks will stick out in my mind more than Levine’s three free throw line dunks. And the “Air Chair”, or whatever you want to call it, will stand out as the best dunk I’ve ever seen in this contest.

I guess time will tell how it’s remembered. ’88 is still seen as Jordan vs. Nique, rather than Jordan winning, so hopefully Gordon will still get remembered for this. Hopefully it’s remembered as Gordon vs. Levine. Because for as insanely impressive as Levine was, Gordon was better. Either way, I finally have the feeling that next year’s dunk contest will be even better.

P.S. This was awesome