Worst Dunk Contest of All-Time?

All-Star Saturday night is just 48 hours away now, and the Dunk Contest is always the make or break event of the weekend. It’s definitely had its share of ups and downs over the course of the last 20 years, even taking two years off, due to a lockout and a season in which the contest was shelved, before Vince Carter single-handedly brought it back. The Dunk Contest is like Christmas. Sometimes you get great presents, most of the time you get some good and some bad, and some years you walk away with nothing more than a stocking full of coal. That’s what the 1995 Contest was…. a stocking full of coal. First off, the list of competitors reads like a 1995 D-League all-star team, even though it didn’t exist back then. Sure, you had the two defending champions, Isaiah Rider and Harold Miner, but the average basketball fan would be lucky if they could remember more than one of the other guys. There was Antonio Harvey, who was actually an opening night starter for the Lakers in 1993, alongside other Laker legends like Trevor Wilson and Tony Smith. There was Tim Perry, who was traded to Philadelphia for Charles Barkley (along with a couple other guys of course). There was Tony Dumas, who believe it or not, was the second best Dumas in the league that year. And then there was Jamey Watson, who to be honest, I haven’t thought about probably since 1995, if not before. He’d be a great RFP of the Day, except he really WAS forgotten. Watson’s first dunk on this highlight reel pretty much sets the tone for the contest as a whole. It looks like a warmup dunk. Even Rider and Miner, two of the best dunkers of the decade, seemed to leave their ‘A’ game at home. I truly believe this contest was the one that got the wheels turning in the league office to think about canning the event. Here are the highlights. Enjoy….. if you can.