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NBA Dunk of the Week: Dennis Smith, Jr.'s Showtime Dunk Was a Beautiful Snowflake

The Mavericks rookie had, by far, the best dunk of the week. It was certainly better than that Danuel House, Jr. "Dunk of the Year Candidate" trash.
Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

In researching this post, I saw a headline at a national website refer to following play as “A Dunk of the Year Candidate.” This is perhaps the most asinine thing I’ve seen written about a dunk all year, but I’m not gonna out the folks responsible. Content is content, and you do what you can for clicks sometimes. But, in making a serious critical assessment of this dunk, you can only come to one ultimate conclusion: this dunk fucking sucks and anyone who thinks it is a serious work of dunksmanship is a mark, plain and simple.

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Now I won’t, for a second, deny the athleticism of the dunker, here. Danuel House, Jr. is a spry and explosive young man. My own athleticism notwithstanding, I certainly cannot throw a ball off the backboard, catch it, and dunk. And in a game, in a half court setting, well, that’s not something that happens very often, and it can provoke a kind of excitement through sheer novelty.

But, and this really is so important, it’s a terrible in-game dunk. I mean, hell, if I'm being generous it is at most, the second best showtime dunk that got uncorked by an awful, shitty-ass squad in the league this week:

Here is Dennis Smith, Jr. tapping a ball into the back court, gaining CONTROL of the ball by bouncing it to himself, snatching it in one beautiful motion, and throwing down a dunk. It is a dunk that is dripping with spontaneity, exploding out of the screen, a show of athleticism and verve that shakes the viewer to his or her or their very core. Dennis Smith, creates a moment of pure art here, fashioning a beautiful, ornate snowflake right in the middle of a truly bullshit late-season game for a squad playing out the string. Something like that justifies the very existence of a game players and fans alike only care about in a vague way.

That House dunk, though? It has none of that quality, none of that spark. It is, instead, vibrating with all of the worst notes of late-season NBA action: the pure malaise of grinding one after another on your way to the lottery or into the playoffs, rolling your fucking eyes while you sit around and wait for your life to move on to the next thing that sits in front of you.

Watch the House dunk’s ostensible victim, Nick Young. Nick probably wouldn’t even be playing at this moment, but his squad is locked into the No. 2 spot in the West and is trying to get away with sitting and resting as many players as they possibly can before the postseason. So… there he is. He bites on the fake House puts out there for no particular reason, and shifts out of the way completely to avoid fouling. He stands there as House does his backboard throw, arm in the air, the pure stink of indifference wafting off him in such a way as to suggest several stink lines, green and sour, flying off his shoulders. Nick takes a few fake-ass steps as the ball hits the backboard. No one rotates to challenge or anything. This is inevitable. Young wipes his mouth, presumably to clear out the crust at the corner he acquired while taking a nap during that last play.

If House had worked in a rotation, dropped to the ground, threw a Shawn Kemp point in Young’s direction, it might, MIGHT, be elevated to something interesting. But House is a two-way player, and showing out like a weirdo in an insanely pointless game would probably not be great for his stock. The context of the dunk itself defangs it, making it almost brutally pointless.

In a way, though, this is the eternal feeling of the end of the NBA season. This thing grinds everyone into a flat, dull rock, leaving them overwhelmed and exhausted and waiting, all at once. Defensive assignments drift by, games slip away, and moments tick away, like so many grains of sand through the damn hourglass as the next stop—summer vacation or the playoffs—approaches.