Boston Celtics guard Nate Robinson sat down with WEEI in Boston recently to talk about how things were going in New York, how he likes being a Celtic so far, and, of course, the Dunk Contest. It wasn’t until the end of the interview that Robinson talked about the event that has given him the majority of his NBA notoriety. (For the record, Robinson says that he had a good relationship with Mike D’Antoni and has enjoyed being in Boston so far.)
When asked whether he has retired from dunk contests, Robinson said the following:
“Yeah, I’m done. I’m taking off my cleats for that. I mean my sneakers for that. It’s cool. I made history. That is something my kids can always go back and say, my dad was the first three-time dunk champion. So it is fun. I’ve been myself dunking a lot as a kid and I fulfilled my dreams and I kept my faith strong. I believed in myself and believed in God and he helped me through all my trials and tribulations.”
When asked if the dunk contest needs to be changed around after the last full-fledged disaster of a contest, Robinson said the following:
“It’s not, you’ve just got to find different guys to make it interesting. You have to get guys that want to do it. You can’t put guys in there that just do it just to do it. You know what I mean?”
As much as the fact that Robinson has won more dunk contests than Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, and Vince Carter makes me cringe, Nate is exactly right here. The problem with the dunk contest was that the league didn’t make a concerted effort to find guys who really wanted to do the contest and put in the time to come up with exciting dunks. Nate Robinson winning the dunk contest for the third time made this an unavoidable reality. If that leads to better dunk contests in the future, I don’t begrudge Nate for his dunk contest championships.
