Zach LaVine defends Slam Dunk title, Will Barton goes Thriller to open

The 2016 NBA Slam Dunk contest was electrifying. The contestants: Zach LaVine of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Aaron Gordon of the Orlando Magic, Will Barton of your Denver Nuggets and Andre Drummond of the Detroit Pistons all brought something different to the table. It was LaVine and, especially, Gordon who stole the show, but Barton kicked things off with a Thriller intro …

It would have been nice to turn off Charles Barkley‘s microphone during the contest, but a cool intro from Barton nonetheless.

Will Barton’s first dunk: Through the legs, reverse jam:

This dunk happened so fast. Barton is a speed player and doesn’t quite float through the air like LaVine or Gordon — so he didn’t receive top scores for this dunk (44 out of 50), but the replay shows the degree of difficulty:

Barton failed to complete his second dunk, which was a bounce to himself where he tried to reverse the ball again. He didn’t make it to the two-man final, but LaVine and Gordon went on to steal the show. Gordon should have won the night with the following dunks that were captured by BSN Denver’s An Nguyen.

VIDEO: Aaron Gordon’s three RIDICULOUS mascot dunks – 2nd https://t.co/w7R57ujoMj 3rd https://t.co/19498XgNN9 4th https://t.co/yA22KffZKx

— An Nguyen (@The_NGUYENNER) February 14, 2016

All-in-all it was a really fun All-Star Saturday night. Emmanuel Mudiay competed in the Skill Challenge, but lost his head-to-head match up against the Boston Celtics’ Isaiah Thomas. Thomas went on to compete in the finals of the Skills Challenge, but lost to Karl-Anthony Towns of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The 3-point contest also came down to the wire as the three man final round played out as Klay Thompson scored 27 points to defeat his teammate Steph Curry (23 points) and Phoenix Suns rookie Devin Booker (16 points).

It was great to see the Nuggets involved in All-Star weekend, now they just need a player or two in the Sunday game down the road.