Ja Morant is perhaps the most electrifying dunker we have in the NBA right now. He and Anthony Edwards can jostle for who has the best in-game dunks we’ve seen, and it would certainly be a tight battle, but the things Morant is able to pull off — at 6-foot-2 in a frame that would typically lead to getting bullied around in the paint more than highlight-level dunks — is jaw dropping.
Morant’s more of a transition dunker, or someone who catches lobs off alley-oops, and he reminded us of that recently while at a Nike event in China. Morant took to social media to share some highlights of his trip so far, including this insanely impressive dunk that had everyone in attendance in a tizzy.
Morant posted that video on his Instagram with the caption “It’s ovaaaaa” while everyone in attendance cheered him on. The funniest thing about all of this, is that it wasn’t too long ago that Morant told us he was going to stop dunking in games because of the physical toll it sometimes takes when he gets fouled.
“I’m not trying to dunk at all,” Morant said in December. “Y’all think I’m lying. I’m dead serious. “Sometimes I get knocked out the air and [a foul] don’t get called, and now I’m out longer than what I’m supposed to be. Sometimes the foul might get called; I still hit the floor, but after the game you might feel that little fall. So I just pick and choose, man. Hey, two points is two points. I get it done. That’s all that matters.”
Morant stuck to that for awhile, but he still had enough high-flying dunks to generate a top-10 best dunks video courtesy of the league’s official YouTube page. So it’s nice to see that he wasn’t all that serious about dunking.
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But what this latest clip continues to hammer home is that Morant needs to be in the NBA dunk contest at All-Star weekend. Morant signaled some interest in potentially participating during last season’s All-Star weekend when he sent a post on X (formerly Twitter) saying, “Mac [McClung] might make me decide to dunk.” McClung is the reigning three-time Slam Dunk champion, and while he certainly injected some life into the competition in the last two years, it would be far more entertaining to see someone like Morant and Edwards compete.
But the excitement of the Slam Dunk contest hasn’t been the same since the early 2000s when Vince Carter and Jason Richardson were constantly dazzling us with dunks we’ve never seen before. Or the brief moment in 2015 and 2016 when Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordon battled it out in consecutive years with one of the best dunk contest battles we’ve ever seen. Since then, the game’s best dunkers have stayed away from participating, leading to the field of contestants consisting of G League players and end-of-the-bench guys.
It would take someone like Morant or Edwards to compete in order to bring the pizzaz back to the dunk contest, and while Morant has previously said that he would compete if he were given $1 million to do it. Given McClung got $105,000 for winning last season’s event, the league would need to pull together far more money to make it enticing for Morant, or any other premier dunker in the league to consider. So until then, we’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope he changes his mind.
