Video analysis: Blake Griffin is awesome at slam dunks.

Personal insight: The hardest part of being a basketball announcer has to be the post-dunk declaration. You don’t have to say anything great — something in the vein of “LeBron James, LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOCA!” would be fine — but it has to be different and dunk-specific every time. If you call a Blake Griffin game you’ve got to have like 25 options written on a piece of paper when you put on the headphones.

For this dunk, “THAT’S A MAN’S JAM!” and “this … is a RACK ATTACK!” were chosen. I’m not one to reinforce gender stereotypes, but a man’s jam would be straight up and straight down as hard as possible, not one with a bunch of twirling, and it wouldn’t call itself what you might call ejaculate. Also, this is a Rack Attack.

And for the record, this is a Woman’s Jam.

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… because seriously, who buys NBA posters anymore? You can’t Fathead somebody. Now you turn them into a trending topic.

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This video uploaded yesterday to YouTube features LeBron James showing up at a kids basketball camp to speak and play a few harmless games of “Knockout”, and it is everything you’d expect from him. The description:

lebron showed up to a basketball camp and after speaking to the kids, he played a few games of knockout. The kid in front of him missed and lebron missed right after him. lebron’s brick bounced far to the right corner and the kid went to go make his lay up. In an effort to not get eliminated, lebron came charging back and went to dunk as the kid was shooting a layup and dunked on him knocking him over!

But it goes so much deeper than that. My favorite part is either the kid yelling KNOCK DOWNNN before LeBron misses his second shot, or how two of the three children in front of LeBron sink threes before his first brick. Watching the greatest player in basketball (and possibly the history of basketball, depending on who you ask) almost get eliminated twice from a kids game by babies and having to dunk to hang with them really puts the whole Dallas Mavericks thing into perspective, doesn’t it?

I’m going to keep searching for “LeBron James baby games” on YouTube, and hopefully I’ll find that clip of him flopping and clutching his arm during Duck Duck Goose.

In case you weren’t aware, Blake Griffin can dunk. He’s the living embodiment of NBA 07 for the PS3, where momentum and showtime points are awarded for slam dunks and every other shot or play is worthless.

If you didn’t know about Griffin’s ability to hold something while jumping, check out the video above, which collects all 214 dunks from this season in one easy to digest jump cut. You might get motion sickness, but it’s pretty cool.

One time he jumped over a car! Well, the front part of a car. The part closest to the ground. But still!

As the Orlando Magic close out their woefully inconsistent regular season, the team’s main concern remains Dwight Howard’s fondness of technical fouls and Gilbert Arenas’ love of being paid $20 million to be horrendous. In the meantime, though, Dwight believes that he is still a legitimate MVP candidate, despite being suspended twice already this season for his 18 technical fouls. The reason that Dwight believes he should still be a favorite for MVP is because nobody’s better at dunking on top of people who aren’t paying attention than him.

Take poor Jrue Holiday, for instance. During the Magic’s 95-85 meaningless win over the Philadelphia 76ers last night, Jameer Nelson lobbed a pass to Howard for a quick and painful alley oop, as Howard dunked the ball on Holiday’s head. Howard joked with the media after the game that he warned Holiday not to jump, and then he asked everyone in the locker room for a moment of silence for Holiday’s noggin.

Meanwhile, somewhere in a dark room, Bennett Salvatore practiced his technical foul hand motions…

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From RealTalkNY comes this interesting tale of Terrell Owens getting posterized by someone much better than him at basketball. Owens, who took a trip to Rucker park with fellow attention-whoring Wide Receiver Chad Ocho Cinco, played in a celebrity basketball affair last night that featured Jadakiss and a bunch of other famous people I don’t recognize because I live a sheltered life bereft of anything but Sportscenter and Craig Ferguson. It’s better that way; I overwhelm easily.

Anyway, Terrell Owens was running around the basketball court attempting to make it look like his 37-year-old butt could run with all of the young bucks when a dinosaur of a man named ‘Miles High’ (something tells me that’s not his real name) came out of the sky to remind NFL GM’s why T.O.’s still unsigned. Okay, the main reason is his horrific attitude and awesome lockerroom destruction skills, but you get the picture. T.O.’s lost quite a few steps from his 49ers/Eagles heyday and his extroverted personality’s shortcomings have finally outweighed his football playing benefits. Though at heart I really do wish he gets another NFL job so we can all enjoy another year of passive aggressive barbs at his quarterback and innumerable drops of hilariously easy catches, this may be the end of the road for Terrell Owens. As long as you don’t turn to VH1. Read the rest of this entry »