It's A Damn Shame We Were Robbed Of The Dunk That Jacob Toppin Had Planned For The Dunk Contest Final

Nathaniel S. Butler. Getty Images.

Remember the Dunk Contest? Of course you don't as it was fairly forgettable even though it happened only 10 days ago. Quick, what was the best dunk from that night? Exactly, you have no idea. Safe to say it didn't exactly have the same sort of impact as the MJ FT line dunk, the Vince Carter performance, or the Zach LaVine/Aaron Gordon battles. For all we know, those days are over.

That's partly because of how brutal the judging was. None of it made any sense, there was no consistency from dunk to dunk, which was very obvious when it came to Jacob Toppin's scores, most notably his second dunk

Even 10 days later I'm still not sure how this was scored worse than his first (47.2 vs 47.8), and it was definitely better than Jaylen's second dunk

but I'm not here to rehash the Dunk Contest. We are all mostly in agreement with how that night went.

So why am I even blogging this? Well because the internet was treated to the dunk we would have (and arguably should have) gotten in the Finals had Jacob Toppin been robbed, and you could make the case that it would have been the best dunk of the entire contest had Toppin pulled it off cleanly on his first attempt

Yeah, that rules. 

Whenever the Dunk Contest comes up you always hear about how "it stinks because all the dunks have been done before", and I never really got that angle. Who cares? An awesome dunk is an awesome dunk, why should it matter if someone had done it before? If you execute it flawlessly, that's all that should matter. If you have some tricks up your sleeve, great. But as a fan I just want to see cool dunks pulled off without missing, I don't really care if I've seen it before from someone else in previous contests, but maybe that's just me. 

I think most would agree that the scores being given during the contest were already a problem, but now that we know what it robbed us of as fans, it's even worse in my opinion. I kind of wish we never even saw this video, and I'm certain that if Toppin does this event next year and busts this out, it's an easy 50. 

Would that dunk alone have saved the Dunk Contest? Not really. There are bigger issues there. But it certainly would have made for a pretty compelling finals, and if that's one of his finals dunks just imagine what the other one might have been. 

Ah well, maybe next year.