NBA All-Star Break: Zach LaVine Ready To Bring The Flash Back To The Slam Dunk Contest

Zach LaVine, Andre Drummond, Will Barton and Aaron Gordon are ready to bring the flash back to the NBA’s Slam Dunk Contest

NBA All-Star Weekend is now just a week away from taking over the airwaves in the homes of basketball lovers worldwide. It’s a chance to for everyone to witness their favorite stars from around the game coming together sheerly for entertainment purposes.

Every event is pretty exciting: the Rising Stars challenge provides a look in to the best and brightest stars of tomorrow, the Three-Point Contest is a dream come true and will likely feature Mega-Stars like Steph Curry and Klay Thompson once again, the All-Star Game itself is essentially a 48 minute highlight film where defense is about as elusive as a 76ers victory, and even the Celebrity game has some entertainment value with the likes of Kevin Hart present.

The real make or break event of the weekend though is actually the NBA Slam Dunk Contest. When the contest is truly exciting and captivating, the entire All-Star Break is deemed a success. However when the contest features few highlights and doesn’t provide fans with the experience they clamor for, the weekend as a whole is quickly forgotten.

In years past, the NBA has been able to rest easy knowing that if nothing else the showcase of aerial ability would feature some of the biggest names the game had to offer. Even if the dunks they threw down weren’t gravity-defying or previously unheard of, the sheer magnitude and caliber of the names in the contest were enough to excite the masses. We’ve seen his Airness grace us with his presence on All-Star Saturday Night, Vinsanity ran wild and captivated our imaginations there, Superman himself took flight before our eyes, and an emerging star once cleared a car to bring the Staples Center to its feet.

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That was then, though. In recent years there has been a hesitation amongst the games biggest and brightest when it comes to competing in the Dunk Contest. LeBron James is probably the most noteworthy of stars who has consistently declined an invitation to the competition. Despite being one of the game’s standout leapers with power to boot, James has yet to take the floor in the main event of the annual Saturday night celebration.

So now above all else, the NBA needs to find true leapers to ignite the audience and viewers at home. They need to find the creme of the athletic crop and introduce them to the mainstream sports world for the first time. In addition to that they need to keep the dunk contest format that fans have been enthralled by for decades. The biggest contest bust in recent memory was in 2014 when a team-oriented contest managed to bewilder and bore a vast portion of the fans who tuned in.

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They have found an ideal group to carry the mantle of excitement and amazement heading into the February 13th contest. Zach LaVine became an overnight sensation when he mystified the crowd last year with Space Jam-inspired slams en route to a victory. Andre Drummond has become a polarizing on court figure in his own right due to his stellar board work and scoring to boot, his athletic prowess defies what any 7-footer should be able to accomplish and he’s shown he’s capable of some monster-esque throw downs.

Aaron Gordon and Will Barton are both relative unknowns to the vast majority of casual fans, but both have serious above the rim abilities and will look to put on a show in Toronto to propel themselves and their careers into a new stratosphere.

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