Saturday, March 29, 2008

Nike Hoops Summit guard wins dunk contest

DeMar DeRozen, a senior out of Compton High School who's on this year's USA Basketball Men's Junior National Select Team, makes a lot of high percentage shots. Actually, he makes a lot of shots, period. While leading Compton High to a 24-6 record this season, DeRozen, who has signed to play for Tim Floyd next season at USC, shot a ridiculous 89.0 percent from the field. Not from the free throw line; the field. And he's a 6-5 guard/forward, not a 6-11 center.

A guy who makes 89 percent of his shots must get a lot of dunks, so I'm guessing DeRozen had plenty of time practice before winning the McDonald's All-American dunk contest.
On a night that saw the biggest cheers go up for Julius "Dr. J" Erving, the father of the slam dunk and one of the celebrity judges in attendance, DeRozan, a 6-foot-6 senior from Compton, Calif., drew some noise of his own with two perfect scores on his final dunks.

For his first dunk of the finals, he stuffed the ball under one leg while on the way up and slammed it home.

For his final dunk, he approached from the right wing, bouncing the ball hard off the ground and then the backboard, slapping the backboard with his left hand and then dunking with his right.

"I call that 'tap the baby,' DeRozan said, perhaps in honor of Erving's famed "rock the baby" dunk of years gone by. "You tap the backboard soft, like you're tapping a baby."

Sounds similar to one of Dwight Howard's All-Star Weekend dunk contest-winning jams. Below is a montage of DeRozen's winning dunks from this year's contest. He might not have the opportunity to break out the more difficult dunks at the Nike Hoops Summit on April 12 at the Rose Garden. Lower bowl tickets are only $6 if you buy in advance.

1 comment:

HeavyJ said...

I got a chance to see DeRozen play in the Nike Global Challenge last year. The guys got out of this world hops and is fun to watch. I look forward to rooting against him in the Pac for years to come.