Even with all of his achievements and accolades, one thing that LeBron James has yet to do during his career is participate in the NBA's annual Slam Dunk competition. Over the years, some of the greatest players to ever play in the NBA have created lasting memories for fans with some amazingly spectacular dunks. The yearly ritual takes place during the NBA's All-Star Weekend as the highlight event on Saturday night.
Following today's shootaround in Milwaukee, LeBron was still talking about Blake Griffin's dunk on Monday night. Griffin is the defending champ in the dunk contest and the current source of the most highlight-reel dunks on a gamely basis. Naturally, with this topic came the question of if this will be the year that LeBron finally joins the party. Said LeBron:
"It's always a fence year for me. I know they're getting tired of me, though, so I'm not even going to start up nothing. I have thought about it before, and a few times in the past I kind of had an ankle injury that kind of kept me out of it. And a couple of times, I was just like, 'You know what? I'm going to go in here and rest my legs for this weekend and then get back to the regular season. But, I mean, they say a lot of the greats have done it and I've watched it over the years."
It would be awesome if LeBron decides to enter the Dunk Contest, which takes place in a few weeks on February 25th at the new Amway Center in Orlando. I have a feeling that a few more fans would make the drive up from Miami to Orlando and check out what James does in person.
I guess all of the debate on if LeBron's leapfrog dunk was better then Griffin's posterization of Kendrick Perkins reached back to James. He commented on the two dunks and the difference between them:
"The difference between my dunk and Blake's dunk, if you're watching it live, you actually had to see the replay of what I did to really be like, 'Oh, wow, he really jumped over somebody.' I was at home watching Blake Griffin's dunk and when you see it like you're automatically like, 'Oh, my God, did he really go chest to chest and to throw it down?' So it took replays for you to realize what I did. And for Blake, it was like an automatic, 'Like wow!' thing."