More than two weeks have passed since Derrick Jones Jr. took a controversial Slam Dunk Contest win over Aaron Gordon in one of the most spectacular iterations of the contest in their 36 years of existence. The Miami Heat skywalker defeated the Orlando Magic forward with a narrow 48-47 final tally after Gordon's dunk over the 7-foot-5 Tacko Fall drew two 10 scores and three scores of nine.
Scottie Pippen, one of the judges during All-Star Weekend, told ESPN's Rachel Nichols on The Jump that the judges wanted the two contestants to tie again, but that they were unable to add it up correctly, resulting in Jones winning it all:
“There was a little bit of a pact, but somehow we punched the scores in and they came up wrong,” said Pippen. “We just messed up … and the reality of it is we thought we were giving them both a tie in the final round.”
“I tried to figure the numbers out and I didn't do real good in math,” said Pippen, who scored Gordon a nine on his final dunk over Fall, noting that when he attempted to change his score to a 10, “the machines locked us out and that was it.”
Weirdly enough, prior to admitting to this pact snafu, Pippen admitted Gordon's dunk, in his eyes, was not worthy of a 10 — a sentiment the Heat forward continues to echo:
“Like I've said before,” Jones told Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, “If he had cleared him, I'd have given him a 50 myself. Even if they tried to give me the trophy, I'd have handed it to him.
“But he didn’t clear him, so it's hard to give somebody a 50 when you don't clear the person you're trying to jump over. I said they should have at least given him a 48, so we could go back and forth again.”
As fate would have it, there would be no further dunks. Jones walked away with a memorable trophy and Gordon went home empty-handed for the third time, noting he should have won the contest twice now.
Jones' Heat will face Gordon's Magic on Wednesday night. The Heat forward insists he's “cool” with Gordon after all the controversy, but there will surely be plenty of fire on the court as these two go at it, assuming the Magic big man returns from a knee injury.
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