I think we all knew that Blake Griffin was going to win the dunk contest on Saturday. If it wasn't clear ahead of time, it should have been when he reached the finals of DeMar Derozan who had arguably the two best dunks of the evening. It was Blake's event, and that's all there is to it.
But JaVale McGee put on quite the show, and surprised a lot of people in the process. In fact, there are a lot of people who weren't particularly impressed with Blake's final dunk, and thought McGee could have won the competition. That includes members of the Wizards, according to Gene Wang at the Washington Post's Wizards Insider.
"The All-Star Game is in L.A., and Blake Griffin is on SportsCenter every night," forward Rashard Lewis said. "So I think everybody pretty much knew who was going to win that dunk contest going into it. But I thought [McGee] most definitely did a good job. He had a chance. But you know, Blake Griffin, in L.A. It would have been tough for him."
Wizards coach Flip Saunders felt the same way.
"I thought JaVale, he probably won the dunk contest," said Coach Flip Saunders, who called this dunk contest the best in a long time. "He did two dunks that no one else could probably do as far as the two-ball and three-ball dunk. I thought he had a great performance. He might have had to do a 720 from the free throw line in order to beat Blake Griffin. With the vote, I think that's the only way he would have been able to win."
Sure, Blake jumped over a car, but what he actually did to dunk the basketball wasn't that impressive. And most of his dunks have been seen before one way or another. He didn't do anything particularly original, he just did enough to justify giving him the trophy everyone wanted him to get.
JaVale McGee had one of the most imaginative dunks (two backboards) and technically difficult (reverse tomahawk) in the contest. But it didn't matter. At least we know how well he did.