The other night, DeAndre Jordan brought down a lob pass on top of Brandon Knight, and Twitter went ape shit. I didn't see it, because I was unconscious, like other old men who can no longer stay up past nine. But the next morning, I read all of the tweets from the night before, with Bomani Jones most notably holding forth about about impressive the dunk was.
So, I pulled it up. I figured it had to be amazing, right? Yea, verily; t'would be the nastiest dunk mine eyes had ever gazed upon and bards would sing it's praises for ages. After all, the cats on Twitter spent all night photoshopping Brandon Knight laid out beside Manny Pacquiao, with Simba trying to wake them up. Twitter had declared Knight dead. I caught a picture of DeAndre Jordan grimacing at what he'd done. Even he looked impressed. I was so ready to watch this video.
And I swear, y'all are too easily impressed these days.
It was a nice little dunk, but it wasn't worth all of that. Maybe my standards are too high, but a seven-footer dunking over at 6'2" point guard might as well have been Blake Griffin jumping over that car. I had a short Twitter exchange with Myth (author of Shadow Precinct, available on Amazon), and he said about Knight, "You thought you was about to block that shit?" And that's my point. He was never going to block that shit, not without cheating. Maybe if he pantsed Jordan or started making out with his girl in the stands or something like that. But that's about it. Otherwise, Jordan did what he was supposed to do, like how I used to jump over my cousins back before they were fully coordinated and I wasn't fat. There was only one way that it could have gone down. So what was so impressive about that?
I'mma need for DeAndre Jordan to go up over someone roughly his size, like Shaq over the majority of centers in the NBA in the 1990s. Otherwise, it's just bullying. And it's not Jordan's fault. What was he supposed to do, finger roll it because Brandon Knight didn't drink enough milk as a child? No, Jordan did what big men do; yam it over the faerie folk who shouldn't be in the paint to begin with. But folks were trying to gas up his head like he did something and he didn't. If that counts as an accomplishment, then so does that time I dominated all those 8th graders. Stop crying, Charlie's little brother. Shoving you after my crossover is part of the game.
and even though it says more about Detroit's defense than anything else, Brandon Knight did what he was supposed to do: He challenged the shot, even though no one would have blamed him for letting that one ride, because, c'mon; he's 6'2". That's like being a preemie in NBA circles. No, he couldn't stop it, but he tried to make Jordan work for it. Anything could have happened. He might have slapped the ball away, Jordan could have tripped over his corpse; anything. But he tried, which is more than I can say for Andrew Bynum. Bynum would have been thinking about race cars, then blown out his knee imagining himself getting out of the car.
But let's not act like something routine is supposed to be a special moment. It was aiight, like Lebron hurdling John Lucas III in a world where Vince Carter already jumped over Frederic Weis. After all, John Lucas III is bite size. What makes the impressive dunks impressive is that the outcome is in doubt, or in some cases, weren't supposed to happen at all. Kevin Johnson over Hakeem Olajuwon. Russell Westbrook over Omer Asik. Michael Jordan over damn near everybody. You mean to tell me that what DeAndre did is on the same level as something like Shawn Kemp over Antoine Carr?
Get the fuck outta here.
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