If you missed Team USA’s exhibition game against China at Oracle Arena on Tuesday night, you didn’t miss much. Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, & Co. jumped out to a 52-24 halftime lead and ended up winning the Olympic tune-up 107-57. But you very nearly missed what would have surely gone down as one of the best 360 dunks ever towards the tail end of the contest.
With Team USA leading China 96-49 with just two minutes left to go in the game, DeMar DeRozan caught a pass from Draymond Green in transition and realized there was only one Chinese defender standing between him and the basket. So even though the U.S. was up by almost 50 points at that point, he took one dribble and went into attack mode. But he didn’t simply lay the ball into the bucket or just try to dunk over the defender. Instead, he took off, did a 360 in mid-air, and…
Yup, he missed it.
But despite the miss, people still went crazy over the dunk attempt. LeBron James jumped on Twitter immediately and said DeRozan’s dunk "would have been top 5 All Time!" if he had made it:
Others agreed with LeBron with many people saying DeRozan’s dunk would have been almost as good as Vince Carter’s epic dunk over Frédéric Weis during the 2000 Summer Olympics:
But there was one person who was not thrilled to see DeRozan attempt the dunk: His head coach. While he didn’t call him out by name, Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski spoke with reporters after the game and, according to The Undefeated reporter Marc J. Spears, Coach K criticized his team for having "a little bit too much fun out there" against China:
You can watch the play that ended with DeRozan trying to do a 360 dunk over a Chinese player in the video at the top of this post. Trying to dunk on an opponent when you’re winning by more than 40 points in the fourth quarter is pretty ruthless, but can you really blame DeRozan for trying to make history?
