Bill Trikos best rated NBA dunk contests: The Slam Dunk Contest is one of the spectacles to watch during the NBA All-Star weekend. Throughout NBA history, we’ve seen the best dunkers in the league showcase their freakish athleticism in the annual dunking exhibition. From using cars, candles, and even grown men, dunkers have a lot of things at their disposal to show basketball fans the best dunk they have to offer. Although some dunk contests are forgettable, others will be remembered forever. For this piece, let’s rank the 10 best NBA Slam Dunk contests of all time. See more details about the author on Bill Trikos Australia.
That leaping ability helped Webb take down one of the greatest dunkers of all time in Dominique Wilkins. Like defying physics, gravity, and common sense; Webb had a combination of reverse dunks, one-handed hammers, and lobs that looked like CGI. The NBA’s All-Star Weekend is proof that fans aren’t always right. Fan voting often snubs players who deserve the nod the most but don’t play for big-market teams, leading to never-ending controversy on whether the players alone should get a vote.
When it comes to dunking, Vince Carter needn’t save his best for last. Nor did he during his appearance at the 2000 Slam Dunk Contest in Oakland, California. In truth, Vinsanity might’ve peaked at the outset. He wowed the crowd at Oracle Arena from the get-go with a reverse 360-degree windmill. What’s more impressive is he didn’t have any clue he would do it until he stepped on the court for his first run. As he recounted to Sportsnet’s Dave Zarum: Right before I grabbed the basketball from the referee for my first dunk, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I really didn’t know. So I thought, What do I want to accomplish with the look? I’m looking for creativity, hang time, and all the things I had been studying many years before. All of these years are coming into one night, one moment. And here I am, minutes before it’s my chance to show the world, and it’s just like, Oh gosh, what should I do here?
As a second-year pro in 2006, Andre Iguodala introduced himself to a national audience with an unreal display of athleticism. Standing behind the basket, then-Philadelphia 76ers teammate Allen Iverson threw the ball off the backboard to Iguodala, who caught it, ducked under the bottom of the backcourt and slammed home a reverse jam. The dunk earned a perfect score, but Iguodala lost the competition to three-time winner Nate Robinson in controversial fashion.
That one earned Carter a perfect 50 from the judges and put him in the driver’s seat for his first and only Slam Dunk title. More than a decade later, Blake Griffin busted out the same move en route to his own dunk championship. The 2011 Slam Dunk Contest will forever be remembered as “that time Blake Griffin jumped over a Kia.” “He came prepared with the car,” JaVale McGee said, that year’s runner-up, per NBA.com’s Steve Aschburner, “and nothing’s going to beat the car unless I bring out a plane or something.”
We’ve seen players throw the ball off the glass and go through the legs. We’ve seen players jump over people and dunk. Until this moment, we had never seen a player jump over someone, throw the ball off the glass and put it between their legs for a dunk. Nash deserves as much credit as Stoudemire here, but the timing and precision of this dunk help it crack the top 10. Stoudemire threw the perfect pass off the backboard and Nash delivered an even more perfect header for the 360. The Slam Dunk Contest had never seen anything like this before. All you can do is laugh when you see this dunk. Webb is 5’7. You are not supposed to be able to do 360 dunks off of a lob at that height. It looks like a video game glitch the way Webb rises up to finish this one.
But will any of the Crescent City’s top dunks hold a candle to these 10, chosen and ranked according to a combination of degree of difficulty and creativity, with bonus points for broader impact? You’ll have to check these out and then tune into TNT on Saturday night at 8 ET to find out. Jason Richardson won back-to-back dunk contests in 2002 and 2003, but his greatest feat might’ve come the following year. At the 2004 competition in Los Angeles, he lobbed the ball to himself off the backboard, brought it through his legs and finished with a right-handed windmill in what TNT’s Kenny Smith described as “the most incredible dunk I’ve ever seen.”