The dunk contest was often slammed in recent years. Critics said all the good dunks had already been done and lamented the lack of participation from the league's best players.
The NBA, wary of an event gone stale, has decided to do away with it. For the first time since 1983, All-Star Weekend will be held without a dunk contest."I think it was getting to be monotonous, and maybe it's good to do something different," Charles Barkley said.
"It was the same dunk over and over. There's really nothing you could do. I think some dunkers were really good, but nobody got excited about it because they had seen it before."
The dunk contest will be replaced by an event called "2-ball" that will team one NBA and one WNBA player from the same city in a shooting contest in which points are awarded on a sliding scale for shots taken from different spots on the court over a span of 60 seconds. The further the shot, the more points.
It doesn't sound quite as exciting as a windmill, between-the-legs, 360-degree throwdown. And it remains to be seen how the fans paying $100 per ticket will react when the event is held Feb. 7.
"It's a big change. The NBA slam-dunk contest is kind of a tradition, but it's been down in the past few years and the competitors have not stepped up," said Kobe Bryant, who won the dunk contest last season in Cleveland.
"I think a little change right now would be appropriate. But in a couple of years, they'll probably go back to it," Bryant said.
The league plans to unveil it's "2-ball" plans at a news conference Wednesday, and no one at the league office was willing to comment Monday on the demise of the dunk contest.
Players had mixed opinions.
"It's probably something that will be missed because for a lot of fans, a lot of little kids, that was probably the part of the All-Star weekend that they enjoy," said Shareef Abdur-Rahim of the Vancouver Grizzlies.
"Growing up, I looked forward to the slam-dunk contest," Rockets rookie Rodrick Rhodes said. "But they changed the format a little bit the last couple of years and kind of screwed up the whole dunk contest."
Some of the more memorable winning dunks were Dee Brown slamming the ball through with his forearm covering his eyes, Cedric Ceballos making a blindfolded slam and Spud Webb, all 5-foot-7 of him, showing an astonishing vertical leap and making a 360-degree midair turn in 1986.
There were lowlights, too, such as Darrell Armstrong failing so many times that he shot a layup on his final attempt in 1994. Or Jamie Watson missing three of his four attempts in the 1995 finals.
The NBA has been tinkering with the dunk contest for the past couple of years, changing the format in an effort to spice up a competition that has not been as riveting as it was back in the old days.
When Dominique Wilkins and Michael Jordan engaged in their epic dunk-off in 1985, the idea was relatively new. It had been copied from the old ABA, a league that was a trendsetter in terms of the 3-point line, dancing girls and, of course, the inaugural slam-dunk contest at halftime of the 1976 All-Star game.
Julius Erving won it with a dunk in which he leaped from the foul line - a move later copied by Michael Jordan and Brent Barry.
The contest lost some of its luster over the years, even with the prize money rising to $20,000, because of a growing sentiment that all the great dunks had been done.