Slamming The Slams

I'm now going to admit something that will make me look hopelessly square: all slam dunks look the same to me.  Okay, not quite all of them, of course.  When they have the slam dunk competition at the all-star game - where the player, say, jumps over a goat, grabs a Gatorade bottle off the backboard, then dunks the ball, the bottle, the goat, and a second ball hidden in his shorts - those dunks are quite recognizable and memorable.  But a slam dunk in a game - where the commentators go crazy over what a great play it was and it appears on all the plays-of-the-week segments that week - those ones all look the same to me.

Maybe the player slams the ball down with slightly more force than usual, or makes a slightly different movement of his arms on the way up to the rim.  But those subtle differences are about it.  Really, it's about as entertaining to me as the various stunts of football players on the way to a touchdown to taunt trailing defenders before crossing the goal line.

It's likely that my lack of appreciation of the slam dunk comes from my inexperience with both watching and playing basketball.  I admit there could be less obvious reasons why the dunk on tonight's highlights is very different from the dunk on yesterday's highlights.  But I suspect it's an Emperor's New Clothes situation: basketball has always been the cool sport, so sportscasters don't want to be seen as the nerdy guy who doesn't get it.  If so, I hope my lack of coolness has helped to puncture the myth.