I was disappointed with Rudy Gay. I see better slam dunks in the midst of games than what I saw from him in the slam dunk contest. His only decent one was the cheap imitation of Howard's first dunk.
The Gerald Green cupcake dunk and under the leg windmill were both good. Dr. J explained that dunking without shoes on is tough, but that's not something an audience of amateurs could fully appreciate. Retrieving the ball from a teammate at the top of the ladder was kind of stupid because that's the height where players normally retrieve the ball for alley oops. 75% of the players in the league could have executed that dunk easily.
Similarly, Dwight Howard's last dunk where he picked up the ball from the smaller suction hoop and then slammed the ball through the regular hoop didn't really impress me. Almost anyone in the NBA can shift a ball 6 inches. But Howard's first three dunks were fantastic. The behind the backboard slam, the Superman throwdown, and the left-hand tap/right-hand slam were among some of the most creative and elegant dunks I've ever seen a player make.
That said, I think it may be time to phase out the slam dunk contest or change it around somehow, where each player has to try the same thing for the first few dunks, and then gets to freestyle his final dunk. There's only so much you can do with a slam dunk and we've just about seen it all by now. If the league keeps the contest going for much longer, the event is going to turn into a parody of itself, with stranger and stranger props, and staler and staler variations of classic and neo-classic dunks.
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