15 NBA Players Who Should've Competed in a Slam Dunk Contest

One of the most exciting events throughout the course of an NBA season has to be the slam dunk contest held on the Saturday of All-Star Weekend.  It is the culmination of the most entertaining night of basketball that doesn't actually see a game played.

Part of the fun about the slam dunk contest is debating over who should be in it and who shouldn't be.

I think there's no question that they got the right guys to be in it this year, as Blake Griffin, JaVale McGee, DeMar DeRozan and Serge Ibaka tore the roof off The Staples Center with their unique, thunderous and flashy dunks.

The problem with the dunk contest, however, is that it only stretches back to 1984 with a single ABA dunk contest held in 1976 before the merger took place.  That means there are tons of players that were left out of showing off their skills in a dunk contest.

Along with that, there is no way to force a player to participate (it's a shame, I know), so there are quite a few guys who had the opportunity to participate, and just never did.

So whether it was because they were unable to compete because the competition didn't exist or because they just declined to do so, these are the players that I would most liked to have seen participate in the dunk contest.

15. Magic Johnson

He definitely wasn't the most athletic player out there, and he wasn't the flashiest dunker in his day, but I still think Magic Johnson would have put on a show in the dunk contest.

Magic would bring his combination of creativity and flare and be able to wow the crowd even if he couldn't jump like the other people in the competition.

14. Oscar Robertson

Oscar Robertson never actually dunked in an NBA game, but that's not to say that the couldn't do it.  He was Oscar Robertson, he could do anything!

Robertson was discouraged from dunking as a high school player, as was the custom at the time.  It was not part of the fundamentals of basketball, thus it was deemed unnecessary.

Just imagine, however, if Robertson would have been dunking whenever possible.  He was so creative and flashy that he could have started to revolutionize the game before Julius Erving.

13. Patrick Ewing

It seems that these days we have become infatuated with the powerful dunk.  We love to see Dwight Howard or Serge Ibaka go up for a dunk and nearly come back down with the rim.  Patrick Ewing was great at doing just that.

Put Ewing in the dunk contest as a young man and you would see some of the most powerful, impressive dunks that the contest had seen up until that point.

12. Kevin Garnett

Sticking with the theme of powerful big men dunking to break the backboard, why was Kevin Garnett never considered for the dunk contest?

For my money, between 2000 and 2004 there was only one player in the league who threw the ball down with more ferocity than Garnett, and that was Shaq, and there's no way that he was going to end up in a dunk contest.

He would have been an interesting combination of power and finesse that would have probably worked out well for all parties involved.

11. Gus Johnson

A pretty well-known story about Gus Johnson as a leaper comes out of Moscow.  Idaho, not Russia.

Anyway, at some point during the 1963 season when Johnson played basketball at Idaho, he stopped in a bar in Moscow where the owner of the bar challenged him to show off his jumping ability.

Johnson leaped from a standing start and touched a nail in a beam that measured 11'6" above the floor, five full feet above Johnson.

That does enough to tell me that this dude could jump.

10. Billy Cunningham

I had to have at least one white guy in here right?  I mean, if it weren't for the white dunkers in NBA history we never would have had moments like what Chris Andersen gave us back in 2005.

On second thought, maybe this isn't such a great idea.

Either way, he didn't get a nickname like The Kangaroo Kid because he carried a baby around with him all day.  Cunningham could jump so high it seemed like he had his knees replaced with springs.

9. James White

He was only in the NBA for a few years before he went overseas to play in Europe, but in the days that he was in the league he surely showed everyone how to dunk.

If he could have just had some better basketball skills that would have allowed for him to stay in the league for any length of time he may have been remembered as a better dunker than Vince Carter.

Don't believe me, take a look for yourself.

8. Chris Weber

Before injuries slowed him down and kept him from becoming the best power forward that the NBA had ever seen, Chris Weber was an interesting player in terms of his dunking ability.

Few players in the history of the game had the combination of power and finesse that Weber could display in his game, and it's a shame that he never got the opportunity to fully show off what he could do as a dunker in the dunk contest.

7. Dwyane Wade

The ship has pretty much sailed on Dwyane Wade participating in any dunk contest at this point.  He is older and his body has already taken a toll over the past few years, so I can't see him being a great participant at this point.

However, if somebody would have convinced him to join the contest back in his first few years in the league, and then added some of the other young players who had yet to do it yet, we could have had one of the most explosive dunk contests we've ever seen.

6. Connie Hawkins

Connie Hawkins, or as he was called in his heyday, The Hawk, was extremely adept at getting above the rim and soaring for an impressive amount of time.

He was a sensation as an 11-year-old (take that, LeBron), where he was seen dunking on playgrounds in Brooklyn. That's just straight up unbelievable.

Due to a point-shaving scandal, The Hawk wasn't allowed in the NBA and bummed around with the Globetrotters and in the ABA for a handful of seasons before he finally was allowed to bring his dunk show to the NBA.

5. Darryl Dawkins

As a man who is full of creativity and flare participating in a contest that is won with creativity and flare, Darryl Dawkins and the dunk contest were made for each other.

He was more of a power dunker than anything else (he was one to tear down a backboard from time-to-time), but he did have some impressive finesse moves for a man with as much power as he had.

4. Kevin Johnson

I initially thought of Kevin Johnson and thought for sure that he had been in a dunk contest at some point in his career.

I mean, the country loves to see the little guy dunk, and when you have a little guy who can dunk over Hakeem Olajuwon, then surely he would have been put in the contest.

Unfortunately not, and he could have been better than any of the other little dunkers that we have seen besides Spud Webb (I can't get over a 5'7" guy getting up that high).

3. Allen Iverson

As one of the best shooting guards of the past decade with more raw basketball talent than 99 percent of the rest of the world, it's shocking that Allen Iverson was never in a dunk contest.

The first image that pops into my head of Iverson is that of him doing his patented crossover to break a man down, but right after that I see him leading a fast break and getting up to the rim and throwing the ball down with great ferocity for a guy his size.

2. Hakeem Olajuwan

The only guy that I've ever seen display more body control on a basketball court than Hakeem Olajuwon was Michael Jordan, and he did pretty well for himself in the dunk contest.

Hakeem was a power dunker first and foremost, but as you can see in the way he backed an opponent down, he was also full of finesse.

It surprises me that the league never got one of the most popular and explosive big men ever to play the game to show off his skills in the dunk contest.

1. LeBron James

This one's pretty much a no-brainer, right?

LeBron played a "will he or won't he" game with the NBA fans for a few years, continually saying that he would be in next year's contest, only to back out when it actually came time to select participants.

There has never been a dunker like LeBron James in the history of the game, with the perfect mix of power, style, finesse and just the ability to get above the rim.

It's a shame that he never did it, and it's a shame that he never will do it.

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