Terrence Ross Honours V.C and Wins A Lacklustre Dunk Contest

In a season where the Raptors could not catch many breaks Terrence Ross got more than his share in the NBA Slam Dunk Contest. It took him 5 or 6 attempts to make his first dunk and was still given a 50 for what was a nice dunk in the end but no one deserves a 50 on the fifth or sixth try. That would leave him tied with Gerald Green on the east side of the bracket.

More help as both James White who was a complete train wreck in this contest and most had pegged as the favourite going in. He had a home hum first dunk complete with a flight crew full of props. His second dunk he did not even finish. Gerald Green than cut down the net like he won an NCAA Championship and than tried something pretty cool if he was able to do it. He was attempting to dunk the basketball twice. This was no cupcake of a dunk though and he was not able to pull it off.

So basically as long as Terrence Ross didn’t fall on his face he had a spot in the finals. He did not fall and made a nice but not spectacular dunk to advance to the finals.

Jeremy Evans on the West side advanced to the finals. He won last year in one of the worst dunk contests till this year’s.

So the finals began with a prop dunk from hell in which Evans leaped over a painting which I thought he was going to rip off the sheet covering it as he dunked. It was nothing so dramatic. He would dunk and than go back to painting which was of the dunk he just did and he autographed with a sharpie. I am sure if Terrell Owens was watching he liked this.

Ross would counter with another gimmick that I believe Josh Smith started going with a retro jersey. Ross would have a purple 15 Vince Carter jersey on. He would live up to wearing it with a dunk catching the pass of the side of the backboard and throwing it down. It wasn’t exactly “Let’s Go Home Everyone….” but it was the best thing we had seen so far.



Evans had a better second dunk but was nothing all that spectacular and Ross stuck his last dunk over a ball boy which was likely better than both of the ones Evans put in.



Only thing left to see was if the fans would screw Ross like they did DeRozan against Nate Robinson. In the end by a margin of 58% to 42% Ross would be named the winner.

Raptors fans went nuts of course but on TNT Charles Barkley was not praising the winner but talking some truth on what this contest has become. This quite honestly Ross’ win aside this has become a joke. The record books will list Vince Carter and Terrence Ross as one time dunk contest champions. But the reality is Carter’s performance was in a different universe from that of Ross. The only thing the shared was a purple 15 jersey in common.

Hopefully this is something Ross can take and build off of for the rest of the season with the Raptors. That would be the only real thing that would matter out of this. Dunk Contests are nice but Vince also led this team and they reached the playoffs for three seasons. Ross is far from leading this team and the playoffs still maybe out of reach.

In the end it was a nice night to puff out your chest and see the Raptors through Ross do something on a world wide stage. That said they go back to obscurity until they can find a way to be a playoff team consistently. 

Here is some comments with Ross and the media after the contest:



So Terrence Ross is your 2013 Slam Dunk Champion: Congrats to him.