The 12 dunks in the 2019 Slam Dunk Contest, ranked

Oklahoma City Thunder guard Hamidou Diallo can jump. He can also put the ball in the basket. He did those two things together better than anyone else on Saturday night to win the 2019 NBA Slam Dunk Contest.

If we’re grading the Slam Dunk Contest itself on a scale of 1-10, this year’s event was about a 6.5. Too many contestants missed dunk attempts, and it dragged the night out. The scoring in the dunk contest was also a little iffy, so I took the liberty of live-scoring the dunks myself.

Here’s every dunk from the night, ranked, with the grades I gave them:

OK, Hamidou brought Shaq out. Is he gonna try to jump over this man. OH MY GOD, he has a superman shirt under his jersey. Is he about to do this?!

Diallo wore a superman shirt under his Oklahoma City jersey, then jumped over Shaquille O’Neal WHILE PUTTING HIS ELBOW IN THE RIM! It was easily the best dunk we saw of the night and maybe the best ever.

ACTUAL SCORE: 50
OUR SCORE: 10 out of 10, and probably even more than that.

That’s more like it! Kemba Walker threw it off the side of the glass, and Bridges caught it, did a 360 and threw it down! It’s not a 10 in my book, but it was pretty damn close. (OK, maybe he got an extra point for the Larry Johnson jersey).

ACTUAL SCORE: 50
OUR SCORE: 9 out of 10

Dennis Smith brought J. Cole out and put on his high school jersey. Then he caught an oop AND jumped over a seated Cole at the same time. This is what we needed. Turn it up!

ACTUAL SCORE: 50
OUR SCORE: 9 out of 10

THE MAN’S EYES WERE ABOVE THE RIM! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

ACTUAL SCORE: 43
OUR SCORE: 8.5 out of 10

Uhhhhh. I don’t know man. There was a lot of build up. Quavo held the ball on top of his head. I thought Diallo was gonna jump over him, grab the ball and windmill it or something. But he jumped over Quavo and tried to to a two-handed windmill. It ended up looking a little lazy.

Still impressive that he jumped over somebody.

ACTUAL SCORE: 45
OUR SCORE: 8 out of 10

Hamidou brought Russ out! And Russ’ outfit was incredible.

But I’m not sure this is a 10 dunk, because we’ve set the bar so high over the years. Diallo caught an oop that Russ threw off the side of the glass and windmilled it.

Give us half-points!

ACTUAL SCORE: 48
OUR SCORE: 8.5 out of 10

Collins drove baseline, grabbed the side of the backboard then did a reverse dunk with the other hand on the other side of the rim. I gave Collins an eight. There was a little bit of shock, but I figured he could do better than this.

ACTUAL SCORE: 40
MY SCORE: 8 out of 10

The creativity here for Smith gets a 10, but he missed the first two attempts and then got it to go the third time. I think dunkers should be heavily penalized every time they miss a dunk. Smith should have gotten lower.

ACTUAL SCORE: 45
OUR SCORE: 7 out of 10

Collins paid tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen by jumping over a miniature plane. But the end product was so underwhelming. Not gonna do it for me, chief.

ACTUAL SCORE: 42
OUR SCORE: 7 out of 10

Smith needed more attempts than I could count to make his dunk attempt. And the judges gave him a 50?! Fix this contest, man. That’s trash.

ACTUAL SCORE: 50
OUR SCORE: 7 out of 10

Bridges gets a 10 for his creativity, but he never made the dunk. He missed four times, and you get a maximum of three attempts. It’s sad, because Bridges was one of my sleepers to win this entire thing. Too bad he couldn’t get this off-the-glass between-the-legs dunk to go.

ACTUAL SCORE: 33
OUR SCORE: 6 out of 10

Smith tried a reverse 360 between the legs, but he missed the first attempt, then he accidentally laid in the second attempt. There should only be one attempt per dunker. This was annoying.

In the end, Dennis Smith never made a dunk. He got 7s across the board. I’m tougher. You’ve got to make these dunks, man. You’re practicing for this.

ACTUAL SCORE: 35
OUR SCORE: 5 out of 10

At least he tried.