DeAndre Jordan threw a dunk in on Marco Belinelli
Shorter defenders still make the same mistake after all these years. If DeAndre Jordan is preparing to dunk on your face, it’s a safe bet to get out of the way.
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The Clippers center added another dunk to his ever-growing list of highlights in the third quarter of Thursday’s night’s home game against the San Antonio Spurs. With a few minutes remaining in the third quarter, Jordan took the ball from Chris Paul on the break and immediately threw it down hard on the helpless Marco Belinelli. Here’s a look at the damage:
Marco makes a decent effort to deny the dunk with a foul, and you could say he succeeded in denying a slam. Yes, the more semantically oriented among us would be right to say that Jordan threw the ball through the hoop instead of straight-up dunking it, but it’s arguably more embarrassing for a player to do his job in keeping a guy from dunking and still technically fail. Jordan shakes off the contact like it’s nothing to finish this play. Belinelli makes an impact — it’s just not enough.
Jordan’s night got a lot less effective in the fourth quarter, when the Spurs began to foul him after every made basket to send him to the free-throw line in the now-standard Hack-a-DeAndre move. Jordan struggled considerably, even air-balling one of his shots, and was finally pulled by Doc Rivers with roughly 3 1/2 minutes remaining in regulation. Nevertheless, the Clippers won 119-114 after fouling Manu Ginobili up three points in the final seconds to force an intentionally missed free throw recovered by J.J. Redick.
Jordan finished with a very impressive line of 26 points (8-of-11 FG, 10-of-28 FT), 18 rebounds, and three steals to follow two-straight 20-20 games just prior to the All-Star break. The pending free agent continues to impact games even if his free-throw shooting sometimes impacts his availability.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
