The U.S. national basketball team’s U16 finalists — meaning they’re freshman, meaning they’re 16-years old or younger — messed around in an impromptu dunk contest, and holy crap. The dunks are amazing, but what’s even better are their names: Malik Monk, Terrance Ferguson, Josh Jackson (‘sup, Pacey) and Seventh Woods. SEVENTH WOODS. He can dunk better than you AND he sounds like a stage in Super Mario Bros. Outstanding.

Check this out (h/t to Prep Rally), then check out the links below.

- Follow us on Twitter @withleather
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Links

George Clooney’s ‘Ball Ironing’ Is The New Craze That Is Taking Over Hollywood |UPROXX|

HBO Greenlit ‘Game Of Thrones’ For The Dumbest Of Reasons |Warming Glow|

Norm MacDonald: ‘Liberace was not gay’ |Film Drunk|

Kill It With Fire: A Virginia Man Set The World Record For Catching A ‘Frankenfish’ |With Leather|

Microsoft’s E3 Press Conference: All The Details |Gamma Squad|

NBA Players Read “Mean Tweets” About Themselves On The Jimmy Kimmel Show |Smoking Section|

Go Read Fred Smoot’s Reddit AMA Right Now |Kissing Suzy Kolber|

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If you’ve ever wanted to see a bear try to slam dunk while being attacked by a gang of sharks, now’s your chance.

Conan O’Brien put together a dunk contest of mascots that should never dunk, and it’s … almost majestic. The aforementioned bear takes on a giant thing of non-dairy creamer, the Olive Garden never-ending pasta bowl, a CD discount bin, and more. I won’t spoil it for you, but one of them actually connects on a dunk. It’s my new favorite thing, and I wish it’d gone on for 90 minutes.

Video is below.

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Despite what a bunch of pompous crybabies like myself predicted during the NBA lockout, a little forced time off eventually did nothing to hurt the sanctity of the league and the statuses and images of its stars. That has been clearly evident from the strong ratings, and it has been aided by unexpected blessings like Jeremy Lin popping up in the league’s favorite market. And as Sunday’s All-Star Game has come and gone, TNT had a ratings bonanza and David Stern cackled atop his throne of angel skulls.

Now we can go back to wondering what’s going to happen to Dwight Howard and Deron Williams. Will they end up together in New Jersey/Brooklyn? Dallas? Orlando? Turkey? A Whole Foods in Connecticut? A lube-soaked spooning embrace? Yes to all is my prediction, because that’s the easy choice and we have more important matters confronting us, like making fun of Chris Brown.

Because that’s the most important thing we can do today.

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I wish more people cared about the NBA Developmental League. To the NBA fan, the D-League is an afterthought. To Austin sports fans, our D-League team (the Austin Toros) are a thing you suddenly realize exists when you’re complaining about how we lost our soccer team to Orlando. Personally, I love the Toros. They play okay basketball! Their mascot is a hip-hop dancing camouflage bull!

Maybe what the D-League needs to help its image are more videos like this one, featuring highlights of the annual NBADL slam dunk contest. LD Williams, Chris Roberts, Zach Andrews and Courtney Eldenson put on a fun, awesome show that managed to obliterate the NBA’s Jumping Over Guys Repeatedly boredom contest and gave us the best Grandmama moment since she helped Eddie Winslow win a basketball game 20 years ago.

And yeah, this contest features someone getting jumped over, too (I kept hoping someone would try to dunk over a 1990 Toyota Corolla), but LD Williams’ dunk at the 0:50 mark single-handedly f**ks up the NBA’s Christmas. Let’s get behind these guys, nerds.

[h/t Cosby Sweaters]

Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a sh*t about the rules? Mark it zero!

- Follow us on Twitter @withleather
- Follow me personally @MrBrandonStroud and Burnsy @MayorBurnsy
- Like us on Facebook.

Links

The 10 Things We Learned From The 2012 NBA All-Star Game - 1 Thing We Learned From The Slam Dunk Contest: the only dunk that exists is “jumping over things”. [Smoking Section]

Liverpool Fan Pokes Himself In The Eye, Continues Cheering - Been there, done that. I’ve also cheered through accidentally getting punched in the balls, but that might just’ve been Cleveland. [High Definite]

Vick Ballard Runs, He Slides … - Now we need footage of Andrew Luck playing ‘Rattle Me Bones’. Alternate joke: RG3 is great at ‘Shark Attack’. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

20 Hilarious/Useful “Walking Dead” GIFs - I was hoping this’d be nothing but gifs of people talking. pGamma Squad]

The Best Of Danny DeVito’s #Frank Reynolds - I’ll never say “trash” the same way again. [UPROXX]

Photos from the ‘The Adventures of Pete and Pete’ Reunion - Toby Huss is one of the 10 people in the world I’d most like to meet. Also, holy sh*t this is basically the greatest thing. [Warming Glow]

Must Watch: Jean Dujardin’s French surfer rap - Forget Jean Dujardin, let’s find video of everything Bérénice Bejo has ever done. And Uggie, minus all the Frasier. [Film Drunk]

So This Happened: Bryan Cranston Wore Breaking Bad Chuck Taylors To An Awards Show - Stay off of my turf in those shoes.. [UPROXX]

With any luck, Jim Rash’s Oscar win will be great news for Community - And with any luck, Alison Brie will take over for Amanda Seyfried and win an Oscar for being constantly nude as Linda Lovelace. Perfect world, blah blah. [FARK]

10 Awesome Animals Walking On Two Legs - So what? I walk on two legs all the time. [The FW]

The Best Interview About a Sex Shop Fire You’ll Ever See - I just picture Pee-wee Herman running out of the store with a bunch of dildos in his hands and collapsing. [Brobible]

Eight Disturbing Music Videos You May Have Missed - I’m pretty unhappy to live in a world where people haven’t seen Aphex Twin videos. That’s sorta my WHATTA YA MEAN YA NEVER HEARD’A MAYPO moment. [Unreality]

"I can't hear you, little boy LA LA LA LA LA LA!"

This year’s NBA All-Star Slam Dunk Contest has very few people excited. With a lineup of Derrick Williams, Paul George, Chase Budinger and Iman Shumpert, who will provide the most excitement based solely on his lob partner and New York Knicks teammate, Jeremy Lin, this contest will rely heavily on creativity and very little on star power.

*dead cat crashes through window with a note attached*

According to our With Leather day-old news service, Shumpert has backed out of the dunk contest and will be replaced by Utah Jazz forward Jeremy Evans, which means that our Linebriation will only come from the Rising Stars challenge on Friday. So that leaves many people asking the NBA and its bevvy of stars: What the F, dudes?

Where the hell is the glory and ego of yesteryear, when the stars would line up to throw down a few dandy dunkaroos while their crews hopped around like morons? I mean, Dwight Howard should have been contractually obligated to win his title back from Blake Griffin this year, but neither of them want to get their hands dirty.

Thankfully, there’s a voice of reason out there that points the finger at one of the NBA’s biggest dunk contest no-shows of the last 8 years: LeBron James. And that voice of reason is a young kid who puts every NBA superstar diva in his place.

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