Jaylen Brown Unfortunately Did Not Save The Dunk Contest

Stacy Revere. Getty Images.

When Jaylen Brown committed to participating in the Dunk Contest, it was the first time in 7 years that a current All Star threw his name in the ring. Everyone knows the Dunk Contest has been on life support for years now, and the thought was that maybe things would change if you added in some big name star power.

Well here we are and uhh…..yikes.

I am sorry to report that Jaylen Brown did not save the Dunk Contest. In fact, the whole event was a bit of a disaster. The commentary was brutal, the scoring made no sense whatsoever, and it sure did feel like Adam Silver was cooking the books a little bit given how Jaylen was being scored

It was very funny that TNT completely missed Jaylen's first dunk, which is exactly what you want when the biggest star of the night is finally up. Not like anyone wanted to see it. Once we did, it was a pretty good dunk. Nothing crazy, probably a little over-scored.

The second one?

We all wanted to see a Dee Brown-esq dunk and this was uh…..something. Nothing anywhere close to the Dee Brown dunk, but it's the thought that counts. Overall, probably the worst dunk of the night and given his score, this is where it felt like the fix may have been in. Dunks over Shaq getting worse scores than this was a little confusing, and when you add in the fact that Tatum blew the initial pass, yeah it wasn't the best look.

Once in the Finals, these were probably my two favorite dunks of Jaylen's night. First the tribute to Terrance Clarke

and then his second where he chirped all the Twitter trolls who keep trying to say he doesn't have a left hand. As a big grudge guy, I can respect the level of pettiness and at least he executed the dunk

Sure Celts fans probably care about this more than impartial fans who only care about the actual dunk, but it was a fun twist that I'm glad he did.

Ultimately all I really care about is that he walked away healthy and at the end of the day I don't have to hear about how the NBA rigged a Dunk Contest title for him. That would have been very annoying and frankly, I thought Mac McClung's dunks in the Finals were worthy of him defending his title

Even I can't sit here and tell you that Jaylen's dunks were truly worth the score they were getting, but that's star power baby. Get him to the Finals, get more eyeballs, more interaction, more tweets etc. Sure all the commentary is about how awful it was and how embarrassing the dunks were, but whatever. It was fun for me dammit. 

Sadly, I'm not sure how the league fixes this contest. It's not just about star names, it has to be stars who can actually pull off an insane contest. I'm talking Zach LaVine/Aaron Gordon shit

Compare THAT to what we just witnessed, and they don't even look like the same competition. I don't think we'll ever get back to the glory days of that 2016 Dunk Contest, but who knows. Maybe Jaylen participating will lead to other stars who are more dunk contest dunkers than in game dunkers and this thing will be better morving forward.

Because as of now? It's still a snooze fest.