My All-Anything NBA Team: The In-Your-Face Disgrace

By Paul Bessire, WhatIfSports.com

I wanted to name this team the “Chocolate Thunder-Flying, Glass-Flying, Robinzine-Crying, Babies-Crying, Glass-Still-Flying, Catch-Crap, Rump-Roasting, Bun-Toasting, Thank You, Wham, Bam, I Am,” after a different dunk once performed by this squad’s player-coach Darryl Dawkins (aka “Double D,” aka “Sir Slam,” aka “Chocolate Thunder”), but apparently that exceeded the character limit for a WhatIfSports.com DreamTeam.

We’ll need to fix that. “In-Your-Face Disgrace” is still pretty good.

The NBA Dunk contest—along with the McDonald’s All-American game and NBA Draft—is not only a guilty pleasure of mine, it’s a guilty obsession.

Here I am, a relative basketball historian, who has statistically analyzed and modeled the game of basketball to depths that very few have even considered, in order to create the most accurate, all-encompassing basketball simulator that can be created. I am fixated by what should appear to me as an overrated play that, no matter how I look it, is worth the same to a team as an eight-foot bunny high off the glass.

Since Kenny Smith threw the ball behind his back, between his legs, off the backboard, caught it, spun around in mid-air and slammed it with two hands in the 1990 dunk contest when I was eight years old, I have watched and recorded/TiVo’d every dunk competition that I could find—NBA, NCAA, High School, or otherwise.

So when I found out about the promotion we were doing with BleacherReport, which encourages everyone to make an “All-Anything NBA Team,” my thoughts did not focus on those with high stop percentages, rebound rates, or assist-to-turnover ratios like they probably should, given how much of my life is spent concerned with those values.

I immediately started thinking about something rarely quantified within the scope of an NBA game—flight.

Before getting into the team, I need to give my apologies to some of those I left off. Though I fawn over the dunk contest, the players that I want to represent me should be good in-game dunkers as well (sorry Spud Webb).

In fact, all of these guys have done something during a game that has made me jump off of my couch. Also, I went with a team of mostly good, efficient, all-around players who could help me win (or at least be competitive) against other All-Anything teams (sorry Stephon Marbury, Jason Richardson and Steve Francis).

And then there are the players who were great in college but have not been great in the NBA (sorry Isma’il Muhammad, Melvin Levett, Mike Wilson, and Deron Washington); those who have played in the NBA, yet not enough to qualify (sorry to my favorite dunker ever, James White); and those who I have only seen play on the And1 circuit (John Humphrey, Taurian Fontenette and Dennis Chism).

The Roster

G: Michael Jordan, 1986-87 (37.1 ppg, 5.2 rpg, 4.6 apg)

You may remember this guy. The 37.1 ppg is not why I chose Jordan, though. At the 1987 dunk contest, Jordan etched himself on to many a young fan’s wall by taking off from the free-throw line and soaring to the hoop.

G: Vince Carter, 1999-2000 (25.7 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 3.9 apg)

There are three people on this team who I feel not only revolutionized dunking, but changed the way the game is played by taking the ball above the rim from higher and further away from the hoop.

Michael Jordan and Julius Erving are two of those players. Vince Carter is the other one (though that aforementioned starting center may be doing it again). Carter proved that the most acrobatic reverse and 360 dunks that we had only seen in dunk contests could be performed in games and to the advantage of the dunker.

Then he took the dunk contest to another level with one of the most amazing athletic performances that I have ever seen in any sport. Seven months after that, he jumped over a seven-foot Frenchman in the Olympics.

F: LeBron James, 2007-08 (30.0 ppg, 7.9 rpg, 7.2 apg)

LeBron had only 109 dunks this season (160 behind the starting center on this team), yet they were almost all memorable, powerful and involved him staring down at the rim as he flushed it home.

He may be listed by most as a small forward because he is 6’8” and can rebound and defend pretty well, but in a perfect world, James runs the show on this team. He can get to the rim at will and set up his teammates for easy dunks as well (though I considered putting Chris Paul, Steve Nash, or Gary Payton on this team just to throw alley-oops all game).

In the sim, he’s not quite enough of a pure point, so David Thompson, Kobe Bryant and MJ will hold down the position—even though the offense will flow through LeBron.

F: Shawn Kemp, 1991-92 (15.5 ppg, 10.4 rpg, 1.3 apg)

In 1992, Shawn Kemp posterized Alton Lister (remember that guy?) in a dunk where his legs went perpendicular to the floor in the opposite direction as “Air” Jordan.

That was right around the time that I decided to stop cheering for Jordan and start rooting for Kemp, David Robinson, and other power dunkers. The 1990s were a lot harder for me than they were for most kids growing up just outside of Chicago. That dunk cost “my team” six NBA championships.

C: Dwight Howard, 2007-08 (20.7 ppg, 14.7 rpg, 1.3 apg)—As alluded to earlier, Howard had a league-high (by 58) 269 in-game dunks, and he may be further revolutionizing the game, especially at his position.

He is my favorite player to watch in the NBA right now, and this is not me getting worked up over that Superman “dunk” or even the sticker dunk—though that last one blew my mind at the time. He is one of the greats already.

No one has ever possessed his combination of size, strength, and athleticism—not even Wilt or Hakeem, though they were freaks in their own rights. I will never forget the first time that I saw a picture of him.

He was hanging from the rim after a dunk at basketball camp when he was 17. Howard’s shoulders and arms looked like he was made to play basketball. But he was made to play basketball in some parallel universe where the hoops are twelve feet tall and everyone is a foot taller than they are now.

Reserves

G: David Thompson, 1975-76 (25.7 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 3.9 apg)

If not for his performance in the first ABA dunk contest, we may have never had the tradition in any league. What would we have done?!?!

G: Kobe Bryant, 2002-03 (30 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 5.9 apg)

It’s not a bad sign when there is not an obvious season that I should select for one of the guys on this roster. Kobe puts the ball in the hole however he can – often embarrassing opponents with unfathomable dunks.

G: Nate Robinson, 2005-06 (9.3 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 2.0 apg)

Oh look, a guy listed at point guard. The debate over his passing skills aside, I have already set my depth chart—and, like Larry Brown, I am not playing Robinson.

He is almost off this list after taking 237,862,068,219 attempts to almost pull off what he intended in the dunk contest, but it is impossible to argue with his talent—and he does it in the game. 5'9” guys are not supposed to be able to out-jump everyone else and throw down putbacks.

F: Julius Erving, 1982-83 (21.4 ppg, 6.8 rpg, 3.7 apg)

On basketball talent, and even as a forefather of the flight movement, Erving should start on this team. But who would I take off? Dr. J. will get plenty of time on the court to swoop in with cradle dunks, jump from the free-throw line, or any other dunk that everyone on this list has tried to copy since.

F: Dominique Wilkins, 1984-85 (27.4 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 2.5 apg)

Not only did he fly, everything was with two hands plenty of authority. The only reason ‘Nique was not referenced in the group of guys who changed the game with his dunks is that no one can emulate him.

F: Darryl Dawkins , 1979-80 (14.7 ppg, 8.7 rpg, 1.9 apg)

My hero.

C: Amare Stoudemire , 2004-05 (26.0 ppg, 8.9 rpg, 1.6 apg)

Amare should join Dwight Howard in that other universe. He is good now and still dunks quite a bit (211, second behind Howard).  Before his microfracture knee surgery, it seemed like he could reach the rim from anywhere in the paint (and some places outside of it).

So there is the team. It’s pretty good. Point-guard effectiveness is an issue, but we’ll get by. Per 48 minutes, the average player on this team put up 32.3 points, 10.2 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 2.0 steals and 1.8 blocks while shooting 49.3 percent from the field (56.2 percent true shooting). 

The home stadium is Orlando, the current home of Dwight Howard, and the supposed earthly birthplace of our leader, Darryl Dawkins. I wanted to play our games on Planet Lovetron, but apparently we do not allow that either.

If you would like to test your DreamTeam against this one, go to WhatIfSports.com’s NBA SimMatchup, click on the "Search" tab, pull down "Dream Teams" under Type and search for "In Your Face Disgrace".

Here is an example game between my In Your Face Disgrace team and Nicole Green's Space Jammers.