Clippings: Happy NBA Dunk Week!

NBA.com has designated this week Dunk Week and is counting down the best 100 dunks of the 2020-21 season, including the playoffs.

They’re releasing 20 dunks from the countdown every day in reverse order, and through the bottom 60 dunks, there is only one Clippers slam. This isn’t terribly surprising since the Clippers are not the most athletic team, and they don’t dunk all that frequently. Other than Ivica Zubac, whose dunks are more functional than highlight-worthy, only Kawhi Leonard and Terance Mann even finished among the top 100 dunkers in the league. Zubac came in at No. 57 on the NBA list.

Fortunately, the Clippers joined the party by putting together their own highlight reel of the best dunks of the year, many of them during the postseason run to the conference finals. Incidentally, Zubac’s slam on the NBA countdown doesn’t even make the Clippers list.

My favorite dunk of the season came in Game 5 of the Western Conference finals, when Mann drove baseline on Rudy Gobert and jammed the ball over the Defensive Player of the Year. That score (with the ensuing and-one) put the Clippers up seven with two and a half minutes to play and was the exclamation point on the victory.

Leonard and Paul George had some impressive slams during the regular season, but because of the stakes, and the defender, nothing was quite as momentous as Mann’s dunk on Gobert. It was Mann’s announcement to the national audience of what he was capable of, and the second-year wing followed up on that effort with a historic performance in Game 6.

And if Summer League was any indication, the rest of the young Clippers are eager to add their names to this list next season.

What was your favorite dunk of the year?

More news for Thursday:

• SportsPro determined the 50 most marketable athletes in the world.
• Owen Phillips analyzes which players stand to be affected most by the new unnatural motion foul rules.
• Spencer Davies breaks down Brandon Boston Jr.’s play in Summer League.
• Kyle Tucker and Jared Weiss tell the story of Boston’s friend, the late Terrence Clarke.
• Nerlens Noel is suing Klutch Sports for failing to adequately represent him during 2018 free agency. Part of the lawsuit says the Clippers contacted Noel’s agent Rich Paul to sign the big man but never heard back.
• It’s workout video szn.