The NBA dunk contest was highly controversial


People are very upset about the NBA dunk contest.
The Miami Heat's Derrick Jones Jr. won the event Saturday during the NBA's All-Star Weekend, outlasting the Orlando Magic's Aaron Gordon, but the victory came with a lot of controversy.
After advancing to the final, Jones and Gordon each received perfect scores, and they did so again during the first dunk-off, setting up a second tie-breaker. Jones' dunk in that round garnered a score of 48 out of 50 from the judges, while Gordon's — in which he jumped over 7-foot-5 Boston Celtic center Tacko Fall — only notched a 47 even though two of the judges, hip hop artist Common and WNBA star Candace Parker, who gave Gordon a perfect 10 said the panel had previously agreed to end that round in a tie, as well.
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Gordon, who felt he deserved to win, said he's done with the dunk contest after losing in the similarly controversial 2016 edition. "I feel like I should have two trophies," he said. "It's over for that."
The crowd was booing the judges all the night, and several of Gordon's NBA colleagues felt justice wasn't served.
Even Jones thought his 48 in the final was unfair, though he does believe the fact that Gordon clipped Fall's head on the way up validated his competitor's lack of a perfect score.
Anyway, check out the final two displays of athleticism below that spurred all the furor. Tim O'Donnell
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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