Unfortunately, Dallas Mavericks point guard Dennis Smith Jr. didn’t move to the finals during the 2018 NBA All-Star Weekend’s Slam Dunk contest, but if he had, he intended to include J. Cole in the dunk.
According to The Score, the detail first emerged on the latest episode of the Black Opinions Matter podcast, from EPSN’s Amin Elhassan.
“If Dennis would have made it to the final round, [J. Cole] was going to throw him the alley-oop,” Elhassan said, as reported by Slam Online. “The plan was, Cole would throw the 'oop, Dennis would dunk it, and Cole would catch the ball and then he'd dunk it too.”
Elhassan continued, “That was going to be the ill, craziest dunk, use of a prop or a person ever, but we never got to [see] because [Dennis] was holding out until the final round and didn't want to bring it out in the first round.”
It’s worth noting that Cole dunked at NBA All-Star Weekend in 2012 with Kevin Hart.
Both Cole and Smith are from Fayetteville, NC. According to Smith, Cole has been a fan since Smith’s college career and was “courtside at almost every home game at [NC State],” Smith told an Associated Press reporter after a game in December.
The Scoreranked every dunk from this year's Slam Dunk contest, and even though Smith didn’t advance past the first round, the outlet ranked him as having the best dunk of the night. “What's so impressive about this dunk is how many moving parts it involves, and the absurd combination of leaping ability, body control, and hand-eye coordination required to pull it off,” The Score wrote. Still, we wish Smith had brought Cole out sooner, because who wouldn’t want to see two Fayetteville-natives together, in all their glory?
