Jeremy Evans was an unknown entering All-Star Weekend. He was a mere replacement.
You probably could not even look at his jersey and figure out who he was. For his final dunk, he donned a green Karl Malone jersey and skied over Celebrity All-Star Game MVP Kevin Hart (a hookup from dunk mentor Dwight Howard) wearing a mailman costume. With one hand outstretched toward the rim and the other behind his head, #Evansanity officially began.
No one may have known Jeremy Evans before Saturday night, but they certainly do now.
Evans took home the Sprite Slam Dunk championship in a contest that was completely determined by fan vote. Evans preceded his Mailman dunk with a nifty hop over teammate Gordon Hayward who fed him not one, but two basketballs to throw down.
He did not quite steal the show, but made more of his dunk attempts and delighted the crowd more consistently than everyone else at least. It was a weekend of surprises for the second-year player from Western Kentucky. It may not be the beginning of #Evansanity, but it is certainly a loud proclamation of this young player’s talent.
“I wouldn’t say [it is the beginning of #Evansanity], but I feel like it’s a start,” Evans said. “People didn’t really know who I was before this, but after tonight, hopefully they know my name.”
Evans was not the only surprise on the evening. In a contest won normally by guards and not by bruising, reboudning big men, Kevin Love won the Foot Locker Three-Point Contest. Love needed a tiebreaker win over Mario Chalmers in the first round and then another 17 points in a tiebreaker over Kevin Durant in the finals. In all, Love, the least likeliest of the 3-point competitors, scored 51 points in three full rounds of competition — averaging 17.0 points per contest.
It was a high-scoring 3-point contest as the competitors needed 18 points just to get into the tiebreaker for the first round. Durant simply ran out of gas in scoring 14 points in the final tiebreaker, hitting just four of his final 10 3-pointers after nearly cleaning out the straight-away rack.
“You know, I’m a guy that loves to rebound the ball, a guy that loves to play inside, really a physical player,” Love said. “But for me, coming into the league, I was told not to shoot three-point shots, so to be where I am now and continue to work on my game, I think this definitely speaks to my versatility. I think I’ll just continue to improve year in and year.”
It certainly was a sign of Love’s versatility that he beat the guards at their own game — and did not even have to rebound.
The slam dunk contest is inevitably the focus and the narrative might continue to be a lack of originality.
There were the typical tribute dunks — Evans’ Mailman dunk was well executed but a tribute nonetheless. Chase Budinger also paid tribute both to White Men Can’t Jump, leaping over Diddy on his first dunk attempt, and to Cedric Ceballos, who won the 1992 Slam Dunk Contest in Orlando by wearing a blindfold. Budinger did a good job playing along that he really could not see through the piece of fabric draped over hsi eyes — just like Cedric did. And then there was Paul George’s confusing Larry Bird tribute.
There were props — Derrick Williams jumped over a motorcycle with Timberwolves’ mascot Crunch on it.
And there were misses. Evans botched his opening dunk as the ball caromed off the rim and messed up his timing. It would have been good to see the Evans’-eye view as he wore a camera, except for the miss. And then Derrick Williams, likely with a chance to win the contest after going 180 on a side-rim lob from Ricky Rubio, could not pull of an off-the-backboard, between the legs jam that he said he completed in practice the first time he tried it.
I guess the fans will never know. Those disappointments will probably cloud the judgment of those looking for something to criticize.
The most original dunk though goes to George.
For his second dunk, he came out in a lightened Indiana Pacers jersey as the music from Tron: Legacy came on. He asked the lights be dimmed and ran through a tunnell of black light. Yes, the glow-in-the-dark dunk happened and it was amazing — even if the ball did not completely shine to those in attendance.
“It was a mix between my agent and myself coming up with that idea,” Paul George said. “I don’t know where he even came about thinking of something about glow-in-the-dark. But he pulled it off.”
If you look for the positive and the fun. It certainly was there.
In the other two competitions on the night, Tony Parker topped Rajon Rondo and Deron Williams in the Taco Bell Skills Challenge, completing the course in 32.8 seconds after finishing it in 29.2 the first time. For Parker, it was his first time winning in three tries in the competition. In the Haier Shooting Stars, Team New York (legend Allan Houston, the Knicks’ Landry Fields and the Liberty’s Cappie Pondexter) defeated Team Texas (legend Kenny Smith, the Rockets’ Chandler Parsons and the Silver Stars’ Sophia Young) in the final round by completing the six-shot course in 37.3 seconds.
Allan Houston showed he certainly can still hit from long range.
And so, that clears the stage for the big show Sunday night. What surprises and entertainment are in store for the main event?
