DeAndre Jordan gets vicious, literally throws down all over Greg Monroe
Here’s the thing, guys: You should think really, really hard about whether you want to take a charge on DeAndre Jordan, especially if you play for a team located in the Upper Midwest.
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First, and famously, it was Brandon Knight on the pointy end of a posterization by the Los Angeles Clippers center. Now, it’s Greg Monroe — Knight’s former Detroit Pistons teammate and current Milwaukee Bucks center — who’s been added to the highlight reel. Brace yourselves, kids, because this one’s going to hurt:
My goodness.
Let’s take two more looks, paying special attention to the immediate reaction of bystander Giannis Antetokounmpo:
It’s like Antetokounmpo wanted to make sure none of the pure evil that Jordan brought straight to the chest of the Bucks’ big man had made its way onto his right arm in the form of after-the-fact spatter … and, really, who can blame them?
Some of you might be thinking, “Well, Dan, that is not a dunk, because DeAndre’s hand did not touch the rim.” Well, yes. That’s true! (This particular high-speed throw-down spiking action is something DeAndre’s gotten pretty good at; just ask Marco Belinelli.)
That does not, however, mean that it is not in at least a spiritual sense an act of pure dunking violence worth celebrating over and over again; I mean, Jordan through threw the ball down so hard it almost curled up and went back through the rim a second time.
The fact that he had such a head of steam, taking off one step into the paint, and Tiger Knee’d Monroe straight in the numbers before bringing the ball all the way down with the right hand calls to mind my favorite, and perhaps the greatest, in-game dunk of all time — Shawn Kemp’s annihilation of Alton Lister. Any time you’re flying in that kind of rarefied air, you’ve done something special … even if what you’ve produced is not, strictly speaking, a “dunk.” Besides, we’re guessing the sensation — of sudden and total impact, of life flashing before eyes — didn’t feel too different to Monroe. (Assuming, y’know, he can still feel anything.)
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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