Serge Ibaka Was Robbed

The NBA dunk contest 10 days ago was a good one, if not as quite as great as in 2008, the most recent pinnacle, when Gerald Green blew out a cupcake while dunking and Dwight Howard donned a Superman cape and threw an alley-oop in the basket from a few feet away. But the most disappointing part was how rigged it was in Blake Griffin's favor. In the first round, his failed attempts, with their unbelievable displays of force, were much cooler than the ones he completed. His final dunk over the car worked because of its pageantry, not the actual dunk.

Serge Ibaka, a forward for the Oklahoma City Thunder, lost the most from this favoritism. In his first round, he dunked after jumping from behind the free-throw line, which neither Jordan nor Erving accomplished in their variations on the dunk, and he pulled down with his teeth a stuffed animal stuck to the rim! Both were incredible and yet he didn't even advance to the second round. (And he and Kevin Durant have a cool handshake.) You can watch the first above and the second is easy to find on YouTube. Oklahoma City is a team that deserves more praise. Here we go second-tier, if not third-tier, cities!