Slam Dunk contestants honor past with array of old dunks

The four players in the Sprite Slam Dunk Championship paid a fitting tribute to past legends on Saturday by using old dunks that men like Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins and Julius Erving had invented several decades ago.

Though DeMar DeRozan, Serge Ibaka and Jevale McGee each tried their best to imitate dunks we have all seen many times before, it was Blake Griffin’s dunk over the front bumper of a small sedan — a tribute to the long history of dunking over props — that stole the show as the most original of the recycled dunks.

“I wanted to turn back the clock all the way to 2009 with that one,” Griffin said of his tribute dunk to Nate Robinson, who dunked over the 6’10″ Dwight Howard to win the 2009 Slam Dunk Championship. “But hurdling a 6’10″ tall man is kinda hard so I changed it to the front of a small car. That way I could say I dunked over a car, even though it was just the front of a small one.”

This year marked the 11th straight year that players have honored past legends of the dunk contest by recycling old dunks.