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Closer look New rule puts new twist on slam-dunk championship
Posted: Sunday February 13, 2000 04:00 PM
By Jennifer A. Cooper, CNNSI.com OAKLAND -- Getting a little help from your friends is supposed to be a good thing. But for three of the slam-dunk championship participants, it didn't quite work out that way. Larry Hughes couldn't seem to get his game going, and Allen Iverson didn't do much to help out his Sixers' teammate. Grant Hill couldn't do anything for his Pistons' teammate, Jerry Stackhouse, either, although their entry would have been quite a crowd-pleaser if they could have pulled it off. Hill tossed Stackhouse the ball, then got down on the court and allowed his teammate to try to dunk over him -- twice. But neither attempt worked. Steve Francis made it to the final round, no thanks to the dunk he missed when assisted by Houston back-court mate Cuttino Mobley. Their attempt would have been something, though, had Francis been able to handle Mobley's off-the-backboard pass. But when it worked, it really worked. The ultimate Vince Carter dunk happened with a little help from his cousin, teammate and slam-dunk rival, Tracy McGrady. Carter took a bounce pass from McGrady, handed the ball off between his legs and then slammed it home -- bringing the house down in the process. "That [dunk] was probably by far the hardest," Carter said, "because you have to have a good bounce, but you have to catch the ball and be able to put it between your legs, and at the same time still be able to make the dunk. So that was also probably my favorite right now." Now the only question is whether Carter will live up to McGrady's pre-contest claim that the two are going to share the rewards of victory. "No question we're going to split the money," McGrady said on Friday. "We're going to split the money, and we're going to split the trophy. Between the two of us, one of us is going to get first place." Well, he got the last part right. Now they just have to figure out how to split that trophy.
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