After years of mostly star-less NBA dunk contests, the event finally landed an All-Star for Saturday night’s event.
The one problem? TNT missed Jaylen Brown’s first dunk, when the Boston Celtics forward paid homage to dunk contest legend Dominique Wilkins.
Preoccupied with displaying a few of the features of the brand new LED court at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the network did not air Brown’s dunk because it happened and needed to resort to a replay, which featured a temporary skit with Brown and a Wilkins lookalike, who was wearing Wilkins’ old jersey from the Hawks.
Then Brown recreated Wilkins’ windmill dunk from the 1985 contest.
The dunk scored a 49.2 on average from the five judges in the competition, including an ideal 50 from Wilkins himself, who won the 1985 and 1990 dunk contests.
The dunk was ok to assist Brown advance, as he finished second to Orlando’s Mac McClung, but Brown also drew jeers for an ungainly try to copy one other former dunk champ, Dee Brown, who famously dunked along with his eyes covered in 1991.
On Saturday, Brown didn’t cover his eyes until after he landed, making for a rough night for the Eastern Conference All-Star, in addition to TNT.
