Few moves in sports are as awe-inspiring as a well-executed slam dunk. And on the spectrum of slam, nothing compares to the posterizing variety.
Unfamiliar with the term? To "posterize" a defender is to dunk over him so viciously and in such close proximity that the maneuver appears like timeless immortalization on a child's bedroom poster.
This past NBA season has produced a couple of all-time poster dunks. As the playoffs reach a crescendo, we decided it was high time to compile a 12-man -- er, 12-dunk -- roster of YouTube's most viral, sharable and re-watchable NBA slams.
The rules were pretty simple: Strictly posters, and only by NBA players and only one dunk per player. We included two from this year, a couple other fairly recent ones, some classics from the '90s and one throwback dunk from the '80s.
Our first dunk on the list, by Los Angeles Clippers star Blake Griffin over Oklahoma City Thunder center Kendrick Perkins this past January, even spawned a mini social media spat. When Griffin threw down his epic flush, the Twittersphere lit up with LOLs and OMGs, and both players' names trended on the network as players from around the league tweeted astonished reactions.
However, Perkins took offense to a tweet by LeBron James and called him out in the press a week later, telling Yahoo! Sports, “You don’t see Kobe tweeting. You don’t see Michael Jordan tweeting."
Griffin's aerial mastery this season even spawned an amazing NBA Jam-inspired tribute video, featuring old-school graphics and sound effects.