The NBA Dunk Contest Is Going Downhill

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Sullivan Lawerence

Senior point guard Ryan Warren dunks on opponent.

The NBA dunk contest has been going since 1977 and there have been many great shows. The dunk contest is widely considered the most exciting event in all star weekend and it usually lives up to the hype. Recently though, for the past few years, many people have been saying the dunk contest is losing its spark and it’s getting progressively worse.

Some people are blaming the decline on people running out of dunks. Since the dunk contest has been going on for so long, the dunks that are being done again are losing the same excitement that they first had. “I think one big reason is just because as time goes on, a lot of the dunks that people used to get very excited for are now being used over and over again. And it’s hard to keep coming up with new dunks every year. So I just think that recycled dunks are getting boring for people,” senior basketball player Ryan Warren said.

Warren answered the same way a lot of people have been answering and it makes sense. Even if many people are thinking the same thing they still need to find a solution to it. “I think the NBA should change how they judge the dunks. Maybe they should have fewer numbers instead of one through 10 because I’ve seen judges obviously call dunks like eight or nine. Then they see another dunk, and now they have to say it’s a 10 even if they don’t believe it’s a 10 just because they know it was better than the last dunk they rated. So I think if they have a new rating scale for how they judge the dunk contest, it would be a lot better,” Warren said.

That answer made sense to me and adopting that system would help in a way. I would change the height of the hoops if it was up to me. Since it’s more about entertainment and wowing people, if the hoops were a few inches lower it would expand the amount of dunks that could be pulled off. With that being said, I hope the NBA does something to change it because the old feelings of the dunk contests are unmatched.