After the 2014 NBA Slam Dunk Contest ended on Saturday night, one of the most popular reactions was, "That's it?" The dunk contest this year was very noticeably short and the format just sucked. The league must go back to the old format if they want to keep this alive.
After seeing John Wall's epic dunk to end the contest, many hoped there would be an extra round. The two rounds felt very short, with a small freestyle round and just three rounds of battles. It felt like the dunk contest was only five minutes long.
https://twitter.com/JoshDhani/status/434904145082859520
Many NBA players felt the same and they complained about the new format, which you can see here.
There was nothing wrong with the players in it (except maybe Harrison Barnes, he was the only bad one in the contest) or their dunks, because they were all pretty good. From Paul George's reverse between-the-legs windmill to Ben McLemore's Shaq-Lemore dunk, all of them were just pretty solid.
It was the format that sucked.
The NBA must go back to the old format. Plain and simple. It would have been more fun. In fact, they should have done that for every competition on All-Star Saturday night.
The Skills Challenge in particular was god-awful. It was not exciting and the idea of two players together relaying definitely disappointed many. It was probably the least exciting one to watch.
In fact, I would say Chris Bosh throwing up half-court shots in the Shooting Stars Challenge might have been the best performance of the night. Basically, the Shooting Stars Challenge should be the only contest that involves team play, nothing else.
The Three-Point Contest had that individual feel to it, but it shouldn't be who is best from the West facing the best from the East. Let it go back to individual, especially the Skills Challenge. All the past year's Skills Challenges were fun to watch when it was single players facing each other.
It was the dunk contest that needed it the most. At the very least, they could have added another round. The East swept away the West in every round. Terrence Ross, Paul George and John Wall were all clearly the better dunkers. Why not make all three of them face off for an epic third round of the contest?
In fact, why not just go back to the old format for this one? It would have been awesome to watch seeing all six face off. Seeing that some of the past year's dunk contests were pretty fun to see, this year had so much potential with the big names playing in it.
The NBA messed it up on this one with the format, but everything overall was fun to watch.
Just go back to the old format for next, please. Looking at you, Adam Silver.
