Remember when Blake Griffin jumped over a Kia during the 2011 NBA Slam Dunk Contest to win his first and only dunk contest title? You can re-live it here:
The dunk was impressive, but there were a lot of people—including some former NBA stars—who criticized Griffin for jumping over the hood of the car instead of jumping over the top of the car (as if jumping over the top of it would have been NBD). Griffin hasn’t really talked about the dunk much over the last five years, but during an appearance on Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take podcast on Monday, Griffin explained why he ultimately decided not to jump over the car.
According to Griffin, his original plan actually called for him to jump over a convertible. However, he claims he was told he couldn’t do that. He didn’t say who told him he "wasn't allowed" to use a convertible like he wanted. But the NBA had and still has a sponsorship deal with Kia, so it’s likely that the league didn’t want to upset their sponsor by having Griffin use a competitor’s vehicle.
Here's what Griffin had to say on Pardon My Take:
I wanted to jump over a convertible, but I wasn’t allowed to. It had to be a Kia Optima. I wanted to have Baron Davis and some of my teammates roll out in a convertible, and then just toss it straight up and jump over the whole thing, instead of just the hood. I don’t know if you guys have stood next to a Kia Optima, but it’s a pretty tall vehicle, and there’s no way I was going to make it over the entire thing—over Baron Davis in the sunroof. So I opted for the hood, and then everyone was pissed that I jumped over the hood, like, ‘That was super easy,’ so it was just a lose-lose situation for me.
Now it all makes sense. And it makes us think about how much greater Griffin's dunk could have been with a convertible.
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