After years of mostly star-less NBA dunk contests, the event finally landed an All-Star for Saturday night’s event.
The only problem? TNT missed Jaylen Brown’s first dunk, when the Boston Celtics forward paid homage to dunk contest legend Dominique Wilkins.
Preoccupied with displaying some of the features of the new LED court at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the network failed to air Brown’s dunk as it happened and had to resort to a replay, which featured a brief 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 contest, including a perfect 50 from Wilkins himself, who won the 1985 and 1990 dunk contests.
The dunk was good enough to help Brown advance, as he finished second to Orlando’s Mac McClung, but Brown also drew jeers for an awkward attempt to copy another former dunk champ, Dee Brown, who famously dunked 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, as well as TNT.
