This week, the Wednesday Dunk Battle goes high concept — what, scientifically speaking, constitutes the “best slam dunk?” Does it lessen the dunk’s greatness if it’s performed in practice? What if it involves a pillar of fire and a trampoline? What if you aren’t a human being and can dunk? How do they relate to one another?

Your job, as a loyal With Leather reader, is to view the following dunks and help decide which slam dunk slammed most dunkingly. It’s important that you participate and vote in the poll at the bottom, for without you, we may never know the perfect dunk equation.

This week’s dunks:

1. The Los Angeles Clippers block/pass/dunk machine leads to a massive left-handed effort from Blake Griffin.
2. LeBron James continues to nerf the entire 2013 Slam Dunk Contest by going between his legs in practice.
3. Kenneth Faried goes up Dwight Howard’s helpless back to catch an alley-oop.
4. A ridiculous man’s fire dunk, as seen yesterday on With Leather
5. Eddie the sea otter throws it down, as seen in Danger’s post from last Wednesday

Please view, and vote in the poll.

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When I was in high school, our basketball games and assemblies began with our principal delivering a dry speech about school spirit and sportsmanship, followed by our sub-par cheerleaders making vague “woo” gestures while a bunch of gangly jerks tried to dribble from the entrance to center-court without losing it or hurting themselves. In Florida, high school basketball games begin with TRAMPOLINE DUNKS OVER FIRE. Because Florida.

This clip (by way of Prep Rally, by way of MaxPreps) features Monsignor Edward Pace High School kicking off a consequence-free regular-season game by asking somebody to propel themselves through a pillar of flame. It’s the exact kind of thing that inspires and leads a team to … a 9-20 record?

Who knows? Maybe they spent their athletic budget on a trampoline and a flame thrower. Maybe their coach is just a crazy dude with a book of matches. That seems like the escalation of a joke, but nope, it’s Florida. If the team ran out after this engulfed in flame like in that one ‘Wax’ video I wouldn’t be surprised.

I don’t know what’s going on in Myanmar, and I don’t know why they have something called a Fire Balloon Festival, but apparently it involves setting up a hot air balloon, then f**king it up so spectacularly that it descends in a ball of fire and sets off a bunch of fireworks, killing everyone. It’s just like that scene in O Brother Where Art Thou? where the police wagon catches fire and all the ammo fires on its own, only … less believable?

I’m pretty sure that all you need to know is “Myanmar” and “FIRE BALLOON FESTIVAL,” so here’s the clip:

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It’s getting harder and harder to shock you with violent soccer stories. Soccer players are always either wiping their blood on each other or starting kung fu gang brawls or being blown up by grenades, so if you see a screengrab of a soccer stadium on fire, chances are you’ll scroll right by it without a second thought. Of COURSE soccer fans set fire to a stadium.

It all happened (in Russia!) on Sunday after Zenit St. Petersburg’s win over FK Volga. The visiting Zenit fans, happy about what they’d just zeen, celebrated by torching their own seats, then throwing wood into the fire while dudes with fire hoses tried to put it out. The best part? The incident occurred at the hilariously Russian-sounding “Lokomotiv Stadium”.

Fire services in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod were forced to put out a blaze after fans set fire to seats at Lokomotiv Stadium.

The incident occurred in the aftermath of the match between home side FK Volga and reigning league champions Zenit St Petersburg, which ended 2-1 to the visitors.

Following the conclusion of the game, Zenit fans seated in the away section set several seats alight, with police reporting that some 430 seats in that part of the stadium were broken or destroyed. (via ITV.com)

If you’re already pumping your fists and going FIRE, FIRE, FIREEEEE, here’s the clip. Warning: extremely Russian.

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After a 36-hour delay and what felt like 36 caution flags, Matt Kenseth was finally declared the winner of the 2012 Daytona 500 after he held off the feisty Dale Earnhardt, Jr., but nobody really cares about that, because DID YOU SEE THAT CRASH??? Juan Pablo Montoya inexplicably slammed into a track dryer truck, which is, of course, just a giant jet engine. So Montoya’s crash led to quite the toasty bonfire. Thankfully, neither Montoya nor the driver of the truck were severely harmed.

But out of a massive inferno rises a different kind of winner – aside from, you know, Kenseth who won the race and all – as driver Brad Keselowski became the first NASCAR driver to ever Tweet a race photo from inside his car. Keselowski Tweeted a cell phone pic of his view of Montoya’s crash and it resulted in him gaining 100,000 followers within an hour. Damn, son. That’s exposed breast followers right there.

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The headline “soccer fans throw firecracker at soccer player” would seem pretty normal at this point. Somebody is upset about something, they throw fire. I watch pro wrestling, I know how it goes. This clip remains unusual based on the fact that Dinamo Bucharest’s own fans tossed fire at one of their players, and that he completely ignored it and nobody stopped playing. Baseball stops if someone feels a light drizzle. Soccer continues DESPITE FIRE. I’m starting to see why people like this game so much.

I had an experience like this during my first ever live soccer game this weekend. I drove up from Austin to see FC Dallas take on Real Salt Lake. That’s “ree-al” Salt Lake, not “real” like the word “real.” Anyway, thunder and crazy lightning and loads of rain happened, and the announcer gets on the PA system and tells us the game has been called due to extreme weather, and that we should flee the stadium immediately and take cover in our cars. The guys on the field just kept playing, and played for about eight minutes in this until somebody made them stop, possibly because we were all still sort of standing around about to die from lightning.

So, yeah, soccer. Who knew?

[H/T Dirty Tackle]