Nate Robinson’s 3 Straight Dunk Contest Victories

         I know this is a little late in comparison to the 2010 SLam Dunk Contest, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t still be said. If anyone is less deserving of just one dunk contest trophy, let alone three, it’s Nate Robinson. If you break down the three contests in which he won, he only really deserved to win the 2009 competition, still arguable though, when he beat out Dwight Howard. Here is a breakdown of the 3 he won.

2006 Dunk Contest

In the end, the two best dunkers made it to the the finals, Nate Robinson of the Knicks and Andre Iguodala of the Sixers. But in the finals, injustice occurred. I have to make a side note about the 1st round though: In my opinion, Dala’s second dunk, an alley-oop
from behind the backboard, with the assistance of his teammate Allen Iverson, was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, dunks of all time. I would try to explain but I don’t want to ruin it. That’s what youtube is for, so here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6z9-l4hnMM. Then came the finals, where Nate’s first dunk is a routine through the legs, giving him a very generous 44 out of 50, as Dala replies with another unbelievably difficult dunk, bouncing the ball off the ground and then bringing the ball around his back while in the air, landing him a perfect score. Nate responds with a well deserved perfect score of his own, dunking over former dunk champ Spud Webb, a dunk more creative than skillful, as Dala finishes up with a through the legs dunk from the side of the rim, finishing with the left hand over the front of the rim. The finals are over but the score is tied, although the Sixers guard deserved the win, it goes into the first ever dunk-off, where the 2 contestants get 1 dunk each. Nate eventually dunks the ball with a windmill off a pass off the backboard which he threw up from the top of the 3-point line. Before throwing the ball of the backboard, however, he first put the ball through his legs twice in mid air, then landed back on the ground only to go back up after the ball. This was a respectable dunk until you consider he had to move up to the 3-point line after failing from half court multiple times and in total it took him about 15 attempts (both from half and 3) to finally finish the dunk while Dala did a similar dunk to he last, through the legs from the side of the rim, except this time reversing and finishing on the opposite side. Nate, inexplicably, finished with the higher score and Allen Iverson was able to sum up the entire contest in 3 words: “We got robbed.” This contest was clearly a case of judge bias, as everyone wanted to see the petite Robinson, listed at 5’9”, be the smallest player to win since his dunk prop Spud did it in 1986. Dala really had no chance, everyone’s minds were made up before the contest even started.

2009 Dunk Contest

This was the only one of three that Nate, probably deserved to win. Again, the 2 best dunkers made it to the final round, except this time the winner wasn’t so cut and dry. All I can say is that Nate, changing into an all green uniform and dawning the nickname “Kryptonate” in response to Howard changing into a Superman cape, made a great dunk over Dwight Howard after his first dunk where he pulled a Dominique Wilkins type dunk, tossing the ball to himself, catching it in mid air, bringing it down to his thighs and jamming home. Yes, Howard had a nasty tomahawk dunk that he tossed to himself off the side of the backboard and then followed it up with a dunk from just about the free throw line, but he also had a “dunk” in the first round where he realized, while in mid air, that he was too far from the basket and just threw it like a baseball and got lucky that it went in, but it was nowhere near a dunk, and therefore Dwight shouldn’t have been credited like it was one. So yes, between Dwight and Nate, Nate was more deserving, but it was pretty close, and it was a very entertaining dunk contest.

2010 Dunk Contest

This dunk contest deserves as little words as possible to describe it. It was quite possibly the WORST dunk contest in NBA/ABA history. This was a case of 4 contestants; Nate, DeMar DeRozan (Toronto Raptors), Shannon Brown (Los Angeles Lakers), and Gerald Wallace (Charlotte Bobcats); seemingly not taking the competition seriously, almost as if they didn’t want to get hurt. There were absolutely no memorable dunks to describe in this one. So I am just going to leave it at this, although it seemed that DeRozan was more deserving than Robinson, if it were possible for nobody to win the contest, then that’s what they should have done.

Summary

To put everything into perspective, think of it like this: Is Nate Robinson a better dunker than Michael Jordan? Dominique Wilkins? Jason Richardson? All of whom won it twice. Was he better than one time winners like Vince Carter? Kobe Bryant? Isaiah Rider? Dee Brown? Just to name a few. Absolutely not. But yet he is the only player to have won 3 times. That just doesn’t seem right, it’s just flat out wrong.