You know the drill. Every Wednesday we collect four notable slam dunks from the last seven days of basketball and pit them against one another in the WEDNESDAY DUNK BATTLE. You watch the dunks, then scroll to the bottom and vote for your favorite. The winner is named the scientifically, democratically-decided Dunk Of The Week, which I assume wins them fame and prizes.

This week’s dunks:

1. Nick Young’s 360 dunk for the mild enjoyment of Sixers fans.
2. Pacific University’s awesomely-named Dustin Bowser catches a ball off the glass and sends his defender tumbling into a wall.
3. Kobe Bryant dunks on the Nets, but Kris Humphries is there, so we’ll just say he specifically dunked on Kris Humphries, because f**k Kris Humphries
4. Nate Robinson’s fast-forward dunk on the Bucks.

Please consult the following clips and make your decision below.

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Last week, when we discovered Old Spice’s amazing video game, Dikembe Mutombo’s 4 ½ Weeks to Save the World, and once I was done playing it for 72 hours (catch the damn ballots, you morons!) I slipped into one of my very common NBA nostalgia wormholes. And what started out as a search for Mutombo finger wag GIFs actually turned into me revisiting Manute Bol’s career and subsequent extracurricular activities.

Of course, Bol passed away in 2010 due to kidney failure and a rare skin disease, but his legacy has lived on through the Ring True Foundation, which was Bol’s most important effort in aiding the people of his native Sudan. Unfortunately, as I looked through a number of pictures, videos and articles about Bol’s life, I was disappointed by the overwhelming use of the words “side show” and, even worse, “freak show” to describe the way that some people exploited his height.

What a lot of people either don’t remember – or just choose to ignore – is that Bol traded this perceived nnotion of exploitation to support his foundation. So even when he was “shamefully” boxing William Perry or hanging out with jockeys and riding horses, Bol was doing his part to make the lives of others that much better. After all, the cause may not matter in the long run to a lot of people, but George Clooney thought it was enough to get arrested over, so hopefully Bol has been bragging to St. Peter and the boys about that.

This isn’t news, but I thought it might be fun to remember Manute Bol, not as a sideshow but more of the main event. Big shoes, son of Manute. Seriously, huge shoes.

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"Sweet gloves, bro."

NBA legend and TNT analyst Shaquille O’Neal, in his neverending quest to completely besmirch Dwight Howard, once said that Andrew Bynum was the best big man in the league. But since he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers in the blockbuster deal that sent Howard from the Orlando Magic to the Los Angeles Lakers, I’m pretty certain that Shaq doesn’t even care who Bynum is anymore. That doesn’t change the fact that, though, that when healthy Bynum is indeed one of the most talented centers in the NBA. The key component of that statement being WHEN HEALTHY, because lately that’s a concern.

Bynum has been rehabilitating his knees after he received fancy lubrication injections in Germany during the summer. Basically, the guy has no cartilage and he’s trying desperately to make his knees work. Originally, he was aiming to be ready by mid-to-late November, but then he suffered a bone bruise that set him back to December or January. Now, his recovery has been set back again, because he reportedly re-injured his knee while bowling. Seriously.

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I don’t mean to imply that we couldn’t watch any sports last night. For instance, I watched the Orlando Magic at the Chicago Bulls last night. But since Barack Obama had to be such a winner and whatever last night, the Bulls had to ruin that game for me, too. I mean, Joakim Noah was knocking down jumpers and Carlos Boozer looked like he had an actual pulse.

My point is that everyone was all fired up about the election last night, even though the only candidate who mattered was Kate Upton’s uncle. Oh well, at least we have some college football and NBA action tonight. And volleyball, I won’t ever exclude volleyball.

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I try to keep my Orlando Magic homerisms to a minimum around these parts because people complain about it, but one of the greatest moments of my life as a sports fan came this summer when the Magic got the Philadelphia 76ers to take Jason Richardson. That’s not a knock on the 6ers, by any means. My beef was always with Otis Smith for giving J-Rich that stupid 4-year deal before last season, but the rumor was that Smith only did it because Dwight Howard told him to. This is just my roundabout way of saying that the Magic now have two more wins than I expected them to have before December.

That said, I don’t have any hard feelings toward J-Rich, because it’s not his fault that Otis loved handing out horrible contracts to the point that the Magic had to give away the best center in the game to any team that was willing to take on Chris Duhon’s ridiculous contract. So it sucks that Richardson was injured in the opening minutes of last night’s 6ers loss against the red hot New York Knicks.

The Knicks were paced by Carmelo Anthony’s 27 points, but the big highlight was Richardson spraining his ankle after he stepped on a camera man’s foot early in the game. And you can bet Richardson wasn’t too happy about it.

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Yahoo!’s Adrian Wojnarowski Tweeted yesterday that a four-way blockbuster trade that would send Dwight Howard to the Los Angeles Lakers was imminent, and it appears that it’s done. According to Woj, as of this morning the deal is in place and just needs NBA approval, which the teams will most likely receive during a conference call this afternoon. As the smoke clears and the dust settles, this is how the trade plays out:

Lakers get: Dwight Howard, Earl Clark, and Chris Duhon

Philadelphia 76ers get: Andrew Bynum and Jason Richardson

Denver Nuggets get: Andre Iguodala

Orlando Magic get: Arron Afflalo, Al Harrington, Nikola Vucevic, Moe Harkless, 3 first round picks, and 1 second round pick.

(Some people with “sources” say that other players are involved, and it is actually 4 first rounders that suck and maybe 2 second rounders, but who knows yet? Who cares? Is anyone even paying attention? Hello, Mrs. Pommelhorse?)

MOST SHOCKING UPDATE EVER: The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that the deal is not done and there may be complications. I do not believe this because the Sentinel is never right.

Of course that has led to a chorus of “How could Orlando do that?” and “Orlando got screwed” and “Orlando took the worst offer out there” and that was expected. Short of a LeBron James for Howard straight-up swap, there was no deal that Orlando would receive that wouldn’t be met with cries of outrage from both fans and the media. That’s just how the NBA works these days.

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