Author Topic: ALL-STAR Saturday Night!  (Read 10223 times)

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Re: ALL-STAR Saturday Night!
« Reply #165 on: February 14, 2016, 01:46:13 PM »

Offline Who

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I remember the commentators talking about it a few years ago -- the difference between Jordan's dunks in the competition and the present day player's dunks.

They noted two things:

(1) We've seen many dunks before. Then repeated and repeated again and again. Less of a wow-factor. Harder and harder to find new dunks. Everything has been done before and seen before.

(2) Jordan could manipulate his arms and legs in the air in a way that made his jumps seem more spectacular which most of today's top dunkers are not doing. They are making a straight jump. The difference is that Jordan looked like he was flying while they are just jumping ... due to the way MJ could contort his body in mid-air.

Re: ALL-STAR Saturday Night!
« Reply #166 on: February 14, 2016, 01:48:32 PM »

Offline Ilikesports17

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I remember the commentators talking about it a few years ago -- the difference between Jordan's dunks in the competition and the present day player's dunks.

They noted two things:

(1) We've seen many dunks before. Then repeated and repeated again and again. Less of a wow-factor. Harder and harder to find new dunks. Everything has been done before and seen before.

(2) Jordan could manipulate his arms and legs in the air in a way that made his jumps seem more spectacular which most of today's top dunkers are not doing. They are making a straight jump. The difference is that Jordan looked like he was flying while they are just jumping ... due to the way he could contort his body in mid-air.
The big thing for me is 2-fold.

1st is the wow-factor. Most of what we've seen lately has either been done before or involves to many props (cars etc). This year we got the wow factor back. Some of those dunks were mind blowing.

The other thing is the star-power.

Lavine and Gordon just aren't Michael Jordan
Quote from: George W. Bush
Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions.

Re: ALL-STAR Saturday Night!
« Reply #167 on: February 14, 2016, 01:58:02 PM »

Offline KGs Knee

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I know it would be the third go-around for Lavine but I want to see a re-match.  Hopefully a new threat also emerges.

That's part of what made the dunk contests of old interesting theater,  guys like MJ and 'Nique went at each other multiple times.

Re: ALL-STAR Saturday Night!
« Reply #168 on: February 14, 2016, 07:05:56 PM »

Offline fairweatherfan

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I remember the commentators talking about it a few years ago -- the difference between Jordan's dunks in the competition and the present day player's dunks.

They noted two things:

(1) We've seen many dunks before. Then repeated and repeated again and again. Less of a wow-factor. Harder and harder to find new dunks. Everything has been done before and seen before.

YouTube has hurt things in this regard - not only can we see old NBA dunks whenever we want, but there's plenty of non-professionals who can do dunks at least as good as the top NBA dunkers.  And they have more license to get creative since they're not being watched live and can just upload the 1 time in 30 the crazy dunk worked.

(2) Jordan could manipulate his arms and legs in the air in a way that made his jumps seem more spectacular which most of today's top dunkers are not doing. They are making a straight jump. The difference is that Jordan looked like he was flying while they are just jumping ... due to the way MJ could contort his body in mid-air.

Good point - he and Dr. J were very stylistic in what they did, in a way that was aesthetically pleasing to a lot of people.  And Dr. J's peak came before the league really started to blow up.