Reliving Derrick Jones Jr.’s gravity-defying dunk against the Raptors
When Heat forward Derrick Jones. Jr. goes up for a dunk, it’s usually special.
But the alley-oop Jones completed with 2:52 to play in Sunday’s 125-104 loss to the Raptors was on another level. The man known as “Airplane Mode,” whose vertical leap was once measured at 48 inches, seemed to defy gravity and hang up in the air to take the lob from Bam Adebayo on a fast break.
Once Jones took the lob, he was so high and so far away from the rim that he threw it down into the basket. Yes, it came in “garbage time,” but the dunk was still quite impressive.
So impressive that it makes you wonder what would have happened if Jones would have participated in this year’s Slam Dunk Contest. Two right knee bone bruises he sustained just a few weeks before All-Star Weekend ended that possibility.
“My teammates, they have this little thing that if I have a fast break and I do a simple dunk then I’m like in trouble,” said Jones, who is averaging 7.2 points and 4.1 rebounds and has completed 46 dunks this season. “So, I mean, I don’t understand why it’s like that with me and not with Bam, [Josh Richardson] or [Justise Winslow] because they’re athletes, too. Y’all don’t see it, but I see it. They can jump out the gym. But they just don’t like it when I do simple dunks on a break. So I told Bam just throw the ball up as high as you can.”
The dunk is ridiculous. Take a look ...
This story was originally published March 11, 2019 at 9:39 AM.
