A big criticism on a lot of dunk contests over the years has been about the judges and if they are qualified to be judging the dunks. One judge nobody is going to question is NBA, Seattle Pro-Am and Ballislife All-American dunk contest winner Zach LaVine.  The high-flying TWolf stopped by the set of The Starters this week to play a game of “Rate That Dunk (10 min mark of the above video).”  The clips ranged from Iguodala in the NBA dunk contest,,.

To this CBA dunk fail…

A pool dunk, a few dunks by The Starters and this “dunk attempt” by Darrell Armstrong that I have to defend.

What people don’t know is Armstrong was injured and taken off the IL a week before the dunk contest just so he could participate and entertain Shaq and Penny who pushed him into the event. That was also during the time when the dunk contest format was a 90 second timed routine and with the time running out and no hope of advancing to the next round, an exhausted Darrel just threw up a layup at the buzzer. The perception built over time is that Darrell actually did a layup for a dunk attempt but it really wasn’t any different than when you see a player at the end of a game take a shot on the opposing team’s basket or throw a full court shot right after the buzzer.  We aren’t going to say he took a horrible shot or he’s an idiot for shooting on the wrong basket because of that shot.

So Zach gave Darrell a zero but I can’t blame him because he didn’t know the full story.