Remember When John Wall Won The Dunk Contest?
The funny thing is, he wasn’t planning on competing in the contest.
Not a lot of people remember this, but John Wall was a dunk champion.
In 2014, the then 23-year-old point guard battled the likes of Terrence Ross, Paul George, Harrison Barnes, Ben McLemore and Damian Lillard for the crown of best dunker.
But the rules of this year’s contest were out there -the NBA got too cute and changed up the format.
So, instead of having four dunkers duke it out in two rounds of two dunks each, they divided the dunkers into teams based on their conference, where each team got three.
The contest started with a freestyle round and then a battle round.
In the freestyle round, dunkers had a minute and a half to do as many dunks as they can.
In the latter round, a player from the East would dunk against a player from the West.
After the two rounds, judges scored the teams and then fans got a chance to vote for the best dunker of the night.
The Eastern Conference got the judges’ nod and Wall got the fans’ vote.
But the thing is, despite being the best dunker of the night, Wall initially wasn’t going to compete.
On the Knuckleheads podcast, he told Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson that he had a condition for competing in the Dunk Contest and the condition was that he had to also be an All-Star that year, which he was for the first time.
“I said if I get to make the All-Star Game, I’ll do the dunk contest. So, I did a dunk contest, but I wasn’t gonna do it no more though. But I did it, I got my win and I was cool with it.”
Wall, 33, is currently unrostered and trying to make a comeback in whatever role an NBA team is willing to give him.
Via Yahoo Sports:
“I’m not giving up on my dreams to get back into the league,” Wall said on Sunday's broadcast. “I know it’s a lot of stuff that I’ve dealt with, with injuries and off-the-court dealing with my mom passing and having my son. My focus is to still work hard, come [to Summer League] and network and be around teams. Whatever role it is, I’m willing to accept.”
He last played in 2022-23 with the Los Angeles Clippers. He played 34 games and averaged 11.4 points and 5.2 assists.
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