Blake Griffin added yet another dunk to his career highlight reel on Tuesday night when he threw one down over Jazz center Rudy Gobert in the first quarter of the Jazz/Clippers game. Gobert seemed to see what was coming before it happened and turned away at the last second to prevent Griffin from delivering a full facial dunk. But he was unable to avoid it completely as Griffin soared over top of him for one of the biggest dunks we’ve seen so far during the 2017-18 NBA season.
Social media caught wind of the dunk right away, and it wasn’t just because Griffin put Gobert on a poster. It was also because of what happened in the immediate aftermath of the dunk. After throwing it down on Gobert, Griffin also hung on the rim for a few extra seconds while perched on Gobert’s back, and he appeared to be paying homage to Dave Chappelle’s epic Chappelle's Show Prince skit in the process. It was obviously a spur of the moment thing, but Griffin’s dunk celebration inspired more than a few memes on Twitter with people pointing out the similarities between Chappelle celebrating a dunk as Prince and Griffin celebrating his dunk over Gobert.
After the game, Griffin was asked if he meant to pay homage to Chappelle’s skit with his dunk celebration. And while he didn’t really provide a clear answer, the question did inspire his teammate DeAndre Jordan to call him Prince before he made his way out of the post-game press conference.
You can check out Griffin’s dunk over Gobert in the clip above.
