Dunk contest won't raise rim
LAS VEGAS -- That didn't take long, did it?
Thursday night in Vegas and I'm about to do what I do best -- head out to dine finely -- when my phone rings with word that we have our first dunk-contest flap of 2007.
Two nights before the actual contest -- and assuming you can still have an actual controversy in what sadly ranks as the faded jewel of All-Star Weekend -- I'm told that Dwight Howard is rather steamed.
Reason being: Howard's request to have the basket raised on a couple dunks he had planned for Saturday evening has been denied by the league.
Orlando sources report that Howard has been practicing a couple wicked maneuvers that might inject this dying competition with the ingenuity/originality it desperately needs. One is a 360 throwdown with the rim hiked to 12 feet, two feet higher than regulation. The other sets the rim at 11 1/2 feet and has Howard purportedly going between his legs with the ball in mid-air before flushing.
Yet you apparently won't get to see either trick. League officials considered Howard's request, sources said, but decided that changing the height of the rim -- easily done mid-contest with the help of hydraulics -- would be a departure from the basic rules of the game too radical for them to stomach.
I guess I get what they're saying, but you can likewise understand Dwight's dismay. He's trying to be the tallest dunk champion ever at 6-11, one inch taller than Larry Nance in 1984 … which was nearly two years before Howard was born. Raising the rim would enable Howard to distinguish himself from the rest of the four-man field and stuff two long-held assumptions about the dunk-off.
1. Big men can't impress us because dunks are too easy for them.
2. Modern-day dunkers can't wow us because all the good dunks have been done already.
With a higher rim, Howard could certainly break new ground and make UNLV's Thomas & Mack Center shake.
Folks like me, furthermore, grew up believing that the dunk contest was a religious experience, as well as one of the two or three most important events on the annual sporting calendar, so we naturally wonder where all this keeping-it-real concern was when the roulette wheel was carted out in 2002. Or when Nate Robinson was missing 13 dunks in Houston and still taking the trophy.
The unexpected sidebar here? I'm also told that Robinson, who's still 5-7, made the same request about raising the rim for a dunk or two. Guess we'll find out at Friday's media day what he had planned.
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No 12' Dunk for Dwight Howard
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Originally Posted by Illusion
