Zach LaVine was fresh out of dunks, having been pushed to the limits by Aaron Gordon in an epic final round that put the slam dunk contest back on top at All-Star Saturday night.<\/p>\n
In need of some magic, he reached deep down into his repertoire and found just enough left for one more go. \u201cWe were looking in our bag of tricks. Ain\u2019t nothing left,\u201d LaVine said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just found a little piece of dust.\u201d LaVine pulled off a between-the-legs dunk from the free throw line on the second tie-breaker to take home his second straight dunk contest trophy, joining Michael Jordan, Jason Richardson and Nate Robinson as the only back-to-back winners.<\/p>\n
The Minnesota Timberwolves guard had never tried the dunk before.<\/p>\n
Not in practice. Not at that playgrounds back home in Seattle. But he had already used all four of the dunks he planned to do when fellow contestant Will Barton told him to try it.<\/p>\n
He pulled it off, putting an emphatic punctuation on a contest that instantly drew comparisons to the showdown between Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins in 1988. \u201cI just think that was the best contest,\u201d LaVine said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was some stuff that\u2019s never been done before. I don\u2019t want to get into the greats \u2014 Mike, they\u2019re in a different breath. If you really look at it as a whole, we were doing dunks that professional dunkers take four or five tries to do and we were doing it on the first try. It was ridiculous, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
The night started as a coronation when on his first dunk LaVine grabbed the ball off the bounce, wrapped the ball around his back before cupping it with his right hand and threw it down. But once the contest was whittled to two contestants, Gordon put on a show every bit LaVine\u2019s equal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so happy I prepared some extras because usually you don\u2019t need them,\u201d LaVine said. \u201cPeople usually aren\u2019t that prepared to go up against you. But he deserved the title just as much as I did. He \u2026 did some crazy, ridiculous dunks. I\u2019m just glad I got the last laugh.\u201d Gordon jumped over Magic mascot Stuff, who was standing on a hoverboard, for three of his dunks, including one in which he grabbed the ball and passed it underneath both legs before throwing it down. He also grabbed the ball out of a spinning Stuff\u2019s hand and threw down a huge 360 to open the final round. \u201cIf I knew it was going to be like that, I would have prepared better and we would have been here dunking all night, going back 50 after 50 after 50 after 50,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cWe would have been here all night. I didn\u2019t know it was going to be like that.\u201d The door finally opened for LaVine when Gordon was awarded a 47 on his fourth dunk of the second round, a Harold Miner-style jackknife. Then LaVine shut it down. #<\/p>\n
\u201cZach\u2019s an incredible dunker,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cHe went through the legs from the free-throw line. That is insane. So off that dunk, you\u2019ve got to give it to him. That\u2019s why the trophy\u2019s with him and not with me.\u201d Maybe they will come back next year and do it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Charlotte, yeah, if they want me to come back, I probably will,\u201d Gordon said.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: Fox Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zach LaVine was fresh out of dunks, having been pushed to the limits by Aaron Gordon in an epic final round that put the slam dunk contest back on top at All-Star Saturday night. In need of some magic, he reached deep down into his repertoire and found just enough left for one more go. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}