Welcome to a nearly-entirely-basketball edition of THIS WEEK IN GIFs. We have important business to attend to. Voting will, as always, remain open until Sunday at 11 p.m. Eastern. Enjoy!
This Week In GIFs: A new Hall of Famer emerges
In this episode of THIS WEEK IN GIFs, we pay tribute to a growing sports GIF legend. Vote, and help us determine the greatest GIF of the week.
JAVALE MCGEE, PART 1
Friends, we can wait no longer. It’s time to induct JaVale McGee into the Animated GIF Hall of Fame. His previous THIS WEEK IN GIFs appearances include:
- Goaltending by sticking his hand up from inside the rim
- Making a terribly ill-advised shot, falling down, and hustling down the court to play defense even though his team still had the ball
- Having an awesome mom
- Coming really really close to airballing a dunk
- Doing whatever the hell this is
In this episode of THIS WEEK IN GIFs, he’s given us two more JaVale moments to consider.
(Click to animate. Via Ben Swanson)
This one isn’t all JaVale, but Hell. If the Nuggets are at the point where they can chuck up an alley-oop from five feet beyond the arc whenever they feel like it and rely on JaVale to slam it home, the rim may as well be the size of a kiddie pool. Unlike some other GIF Hall of Famers, JaVale McGee is a good, exciting player who is capable of moments of brilliance.
He is also capable of dumb shit.
JAVALE MCGEE, PART 2
(Click to animate. Via Ben Swanson)
Here we see our friend JaVale trying to simultaneously dunk over Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries, who are a combined 13’9” and are perfectly well-positioned to defend. JaVale probably doesn’t have that many more bad shot ideas than the average player, but the bad ideas he has are really bad.
LEBRON JAMES
(Click to animate. Via Seth Rosenthal)
This should so count as an and-1. It didn’t, and I know the NBA rules don’t say it should, but my basketball-watching instincts tell me it must. Dwyane Wade is in the air when he’s fouled, you know? And LeBron is in the air when he catches it and jams it home, you know? The ball never touched the ground or any player whose feet were on the ground.
Also, that’s like the 15th LeBron dunk GIF I’ve seen this season. Dude’s playing like eight-year-old me is coaching him, which seems to be working out well, because he’s playing some of the best ball of his life.
NATE ROBINSON/TIAGO SPLITTER
(Click to animate.Via @cjzero)
Aside a player as large as Tiago Splitter, Nate Robinson’s agile smallness is threatening. Dude’s a pathogen. Splitter needs to be sure to wash his hands after this game. Also, no absolute clowning is complete without the clownee falling down for no other reason than that he was just clowned.
BRANDON JENNINGS
(Click to animate)
wwwwwwhelp
DEANDRE JORDAN
(Via @jose3030)
As many of y’all might know, I am a student and enthusiast of the airballed free throw. Mr. Jordan’s effort doesn’t quite meet the criteria, since it hits the backboard and all, but it might actually be worsebetter. If a free throw misses badly, it’s almost always because it was too short or too long. If the shooter misses in the left-to-right sense, it’s usually not by much.
Mr. Jordan missed right by over a foot. I hope someone called the police.
JACK EDWARDS
(Click to animate. Via Nicholas Scibetta)
Down 3-1 with a few minutes left in the game, the Bruins yanked their goalie and managed to pull two goals out of their asses to tie the game. They ended up losing in overtime, but not before giving their play-by-play man in the booth something to carry on about.
That’s your hockey GIF this week! That’s all you get, jerks! Back to basketball.
BEN BRUST
(Click to animate. Via @bubbaprog)
I really want to see a study of half-court shots. Thanks to some manner of selective exposure bias, I’m sure they aren’t successful as often as I’m inclined to believe. But we’ve seen a lot of them, and I would trade every single one for the power to nudge Gordon Hayward’s shot just a couple inches over.
VOTE!
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