Iconic Warriors Dunk Tournament: #7 Wiggins on Doncic vs #10 Wiggins on Clarke. & open thread

A tough matchup

Most Iconic Warriors Dunk Tournament

The question is simple: What is the most iconic Warriors dunk?

To settle this extremely important matter, we will have a straight single elimination bracket tournament. You might say, wait isn’t this just an excuse to rewatch fantastic dunks? Of course not, this is purely for science.

DNHQ commenters nominated a number of dunks. I filtered out 16 based on whether I could find an official NBA or ESPN YouTube video about the play. The reasoning is simple: How iconic can a play be if it doesn’t have its own video?

I considered determining the seeding using the same strategy as NCAA March Madness Committees — “pulling it out of my butt” — but I opted to seed the plays based on the number of views the official video had. Humans must make the final decision. Humans like you.

I suggest for this very scientific process that you carefully view each dunk and put the volume on loud.

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#7 Wiggins on Doncic

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#10 Wiggins on Clarke

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Vote

To vote, you can use the Substack poll here or write a comment including exactly one hashtag #SEVEN or #TEN. Comment votes with explanation are worth 10 poll votes.

Results of Last Vote

The weighted vote was:

• 80% - #8 Draymond long pass to Steph mid-air alley oop to KD

• 15% - #9 Jason Richardson Dunk Contest, 2002 and 2003

• 5% - I don’t know

#8 moves on to the next round!

My emotional memory of the alley-oop (so possibly not supported by chronology) was that the Super Villians were still getting their footing at the time. They had been clobbered on opening night and then Steph looked out of sorts trying to Fit In around KD. They were winning but didn’t have the multiplicative magic between KD and Steph yet. This play was one of the first sublime moments of cooperation and hint that they could all be great together, not just in parallel.

As for J Rich’s dunk contests… it is hard to appreciate in the Curry era (when the Warriors have so many successes that some people can complain with a straight face about winning a title not in the exact way they wanted), but the two decades between Webber leaving and Steph coming back from the ankle injury, those were pretty bare times with very few high points. Two of the top were We Believe and the J Rich dunk contests, possibly the only two victories on a national stage in that slog of a time. And those were some really sweet dunks.

Select Comments from Iconic Warriors Dunk Tournament: #8 Dray to Steph to KD vs #9 J Rich Dunk Contest…

this is not just an excuse to watch nasty dunks, this is for science

• ForeverFoyled (7 ♡):

  #8 . In less than 4 seconds the ball travels the full length of the court, never touches the ground but touched by 4 Warriors, and finished with a demoralizing dunk. Villainy.

• Trogdor (6 ♡):

  THIS IS THE 8 VS 9 SEEDS????????

  My goodness this is going to be an amazing/awesome tournament!

  Alright I think 8 probably *will* win, and maybe even perhaps *should* win, but I am going to vote for #9.

  Here's why: the Durant dunk was incredible, and to echo Sir Apricot below, it was one of the first moments of magic during the KD era, an era that really redefined what greatness looked like and how stars could play together.

  However, it was only one of *many* magical moments during that era, and certainly is not a defining factor of that era. Jason Richardson's dunks, however, were so much more important to the franchise and the fanbase in the moment. It came near the end of 12 straight years of finishing 5th or lower in the division. The team hadn't made the playoffs in a decade, and hadn't won a playoff series in even longer. The best marketing we could get going at the time was "It's a great time out." Essentially, we know how to have fun... not necessarily how to win!

  Then came Jason Richardson and the dunk contest. The last Warrior to be an All-Star was Sprewell and the team wouldn't have another one until David Lee a decade later. Sure, he wasn't an All-Star himself, but he gave us a reason to care about the All-Star game, and gave us something to be excited about. He brought home the only trophies of any kind the franchise had sniffed since the 70s. He did this back when the dunk contest was still considered the best part of All-Star Weekend. For one moment, he made the Warriors the center of the NBA world, and gave us something to be proud about as a fan base.

  So were Richardson's staged dunks with the chance for "do overs" more impressive overall than Draymond, Steph, and KD's moment of magic? Maybe not. But I will still vote for it for what those dunk contest victories meant to the franchise at the time and how iconic they were for the era.

• Alas Phood Fight (6 ♡):

  I took J Rich. Why? The Durant dunk wasn't really a dunk. It was 2 incredible passes combined with what I might call a 'tip-in'. If you took out the background and the ball, you might think Durant was tossing a pair of dirty gym socks into the hamper. What J Rich did in those desperate years was cause people across the country to ask, "Where is Golden State?" J Rich gets the nod for exposing national ignorance and disrespect for Oaktown. He tagged the Dunk Contest like a dirty subway train: "It's Oakland, B...."

  And that gets my vote.

• fzwinter (5 ♡):

  #8 The play showcased the talent, creativity, and execution of three sure-fire HOF players in four seconds during a game (albeit lopsided) situation. Far better than any dunk in a dunk contest.

  Of course, I'm expecting dunk number 8 to go up against the BD posterizing of AK47 in the next round, so its shelf-life may be limited in this contest.

  Even this dunk, though, was overshadowed by the one guy on the floor who didn't touch the ball in that possession, who ended up scoring 60 points in 29 minutes on 11 dribbles. Some night!

• Goofus (5 ♡):

  #8

  Because of the setting, my voting throughout this is probably going to skew:

  Playoff-game dunks> Regular-season dunks > Real-game dunks > Exhibition-game dunks > Dunk contest dunks

• belilaugh (4 ♡):

  Richardson #9. Those Richardson dunk contest performances were like the only thing Warriors fans had to be happy about in that era, they "put the Warriors on the map" albeit in one of the more insignificant ways possible. The Green to Curry to KD play was iconic but the dunk itself was actually the worst part of it, KD placed it into the hoop rather than stuffing it in.

  EDIT: Richardson off the backboard between the legs is one of the cleanest dunk contest dunks of all time.