Even If It's Not A Dunk It's Unbelievable

I'd like to put to rest any debate over whether or not Blake Griffin's play the other night was indeed a dunk or just an overhyped, glorified lay-up: It was a dunk. His hand grazed the rim and he pushed the ball through the hoop, which is the definition of a slam dunk. Kevin Durant tried to downplay it as nothing but 2 points (plus a free throw) and also implied it wasn't really a slam, but he was just protecting his teammate, and a number of other people have said it's not really a dunk. That hasn't stopped Sportscenter from dedicating hours to it or people making Twitter handles and Facebook pages dedicated to this one play in a regular season game in January, yet there are still some Griffin deniers out there. But whether or not it was or wasn't a dunk is besides the point. Whatever it is it's an amazing athletic feat to have your head nearly 3 feet above the rim and throw the ball down with extreme force while a 270 pound beast hangs all over you. Maybe we should come up with a new name for these types of plays if the prevailing thought by the contrarian (read Bottle) is that it's not really a dunk unless you grab the rim. Dwight Howard had a similar "dunk" to win the dunk contest a few years ago and he had a few haters because of it, but it's impossible to deny that the "throw" through the hoop is one of the more impressive moves a person can make on the basketball court. In order to throw the ball through the hoop you have to be a good foot above the rim. Anyone can go up and do a boring two handed jam like Kevin Love or any other garden variety White guy or Black guy who plays like he's White. But throw the ball through the rim and now you're really doing something. Maybe the popularity of Lob City (and all the new Clippers fans who have suddenly popped up out of nowhere) will start a new trend of "throw" dunkers. Who can get up high enough and throw it down the hardest without touching the rim? I'd wager that there are maybe 10 other people in the world who could accomplish a "Mozgov" on a regular basis, even if there are probably millions of people who could "dunk".

Now let's never talk about this play again.