The NBA dunk contest was highly controversial

Derrick Jones Jr.
(Image credit: Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

People are very upset about the NBA dunk contest.

The Miami Heat's Derrick Jones Jr. won the event Saturday during the NBA's All-Star Weekend, outlasting the Orlando Magic's Aaron Gordon, but the victory came with a lot of controversy.

After advancing to the final, Jones and Gordon each received perfect scores, and they did so again during the first dunk-off, setting up a second tie-breaker. Jones' dunk in that round garnered a score of 48 out of 50 from the judges, while Gordon's — in which he jumped over 7-foot-5 Boston Celtic center Tacko Fall — only notched a 47 even though two of the judges, hip hop artist Common and WNBA star Candace Parker, who gave Gordon a perfect 10 said the panel had previously agreed to end that round in a tie, as well.

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Gordon, who felt he deserved to win, said he's done with the dunk contest after losing in the similarly controversial 2016 edition. "I feel like I should have two trophies," he said. "It's over for that."

The crowd was booing the judges all the night, and several of Gordon's NBA colleagues felt justice wasn't served.

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Even Jones thought his 48 in the final was unfair, though he does believe the fact that Gordon clipped Fall's head on the way up validated his competitor's lack of a perfect score.

Anyway, check out the final two displays of athleticism below that spurred all the furor. Tim O'Donnell

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.