Jones Jr. reflects on Slam Dunk Contest win: ‘It was my birthday and I’m getting hated on.’
When Miami Heat forward Derrick Jones Jr. faces off against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday night, he will be reminded of a career highlight.
But the matchup will also remind Jones of some moments he has been trying to forget.
The Heat-Magic game will be the first meeting between Jones and Magic forward Aaron Gordon since facing off as finalists in the Slam Dunk Contest during All-Star Weekend. Jones won the Feb. 15 event, but a controversial finish left many questioning whether Gordon was the deserving winner.
“Just all the criticism and hate that I got,” Jones said of the fan reaction he was met with immediately after winning the contest. “It’s like ‘bro, what’s the point of me even doing it [next year].’”
The contest required an overtime round in a back-and-forth display that went down as one of the best slam dunk contests in recent history. But it will also be remembered for its controversial ending, when Jones won by a point because of an apparent error by the judges.
After Jones received a score of 48 for his second dunk of the dunk-off (taking off from just past the free-throw line and windmilling it down), Gordon needed was a score of 49 or 50 to win the event. That’s when Gordon called on 7-foot-5 Celtics center Tacko Fall to try to clinch the contest.
But Gordon clipped Fall’s head on the way up before completing the dunk and received a score of 47, losing the event to Jones. Players on the court and fans in the arena were left surprised by the result, as Gordon said to reporters immediately following the contest: “Jumping over somebody 7-5 and dunking is no easy feat. What did I get, like a 47? Come on, man. What are we doing?”
Former Chicago Bulls forward Scottie Pippen, who was one of the judges in the contest, said on ESPN the plan was to award Gordon with a score of 48 to leave the two tied and extend the competition another round. But with Jones’ former Heat teammate Dwyane Wade among the five judges, a counting error apparently helped decide the winner.
“There was a little bit of a pact, but somehow we punched the scores in and they came up wrong,” Pippen said. “We just messed up. ... The reality of it is we thought we were giving them both a tie to go back in the final round.”
The controversial finish forced Jones, who took home the Slam Dunk Contest crown on his 23rd birthday, to get off social media for a few days because of all the criticism he received for winning.
“I’m going out here to put on a show for the fans and make sure everybody is happy and having a good time,” Jones said. “But at the end of the day, it was my birthday and I’m getting hated on. That was one of those experiences that I didn’t like.
“That whole night, I just shut off social media for the rest of the weekend until we started back up playing. My social media had been off. As soon as our games started back up, that’s when I turned it back on.”
Jones has not rewatched the contest and he doesn’t plan to either.
“I got my goal done and I’m done with it,” he said.
When asked if he felt bad for Gordon because of the way the event ended, Jones offered the same honest answer he has been giving for the last few weeks.
“If he would have cleared [Fall], I would have given him a 50 myself,” Jones said. “Even if they tried to give me the trophy, I would have handed it to him. But he didn’t clear him. It’s hard to give somebody a 50 when you don’t even clear the person you’re trying to jump over. I said, they should have at least given him 48 so we could go back and forth again. That’s what I would have loved.”
Instead, Jones became the second Heat player to win the Slam Dunk Contest. He joined Harold Miner on the short list of Heat participants who have claimed the dunk crown, with Miner winning in 1993 and 1995.
Controversial finish or not, Jones goes down in the record book as the 2020 winner.
“I don’t understand the reaction from people trying to say Aaron got robbed or whatever,” Jones said. “But at the end of the day, the next person to say something to me about him getting robbed, I’ll tweet back to them: ‘Go try my first dunk in the gym right now. Videotape it and send it to me.’
“If half the people can go out there that said all I did was between-the-legs dunks, if they can go out there and show me that they can do those dunks on a 10-foot rim in front of thousands and thousands of fans. Then they can say my dunks were easy.”
▪ The Heat listed guard Tyler Herro (right ankle soreness) and Meyers Leonard (sprained left ankle) as out for Wednesday’s game against the Bucks. It marks the 13th consecutive game both have missed with their respective injuries.
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 11:36 AM.
