http://sports.espn.go.com/ncw/columns/story?id=1771877

Woman wins DUNK contest.......WHAT! Way to go!!!!!!! Probably a little embarassing for th guy that took second but pretty awesome for Candce Parker. This may allow for Coach Summit to say, "Diana Taurasi who?"

The dunk story was great - I hope I can watch it tomorrow night.

As to the quote . . . don't even go there! :p

I am a big UCONN fan....I grew up in Clinton, Connecticut. I love Taurasi too and believe that she is one of if not the best ever women's college basketball player!

Not a surprise for us that have seen her here in Illinois. She plays just like a guy. Candace is from Naperville Central High School, about 10 minutes from my house. She won back to back Class AA State Championships and declared her letter of intent on ESPN live about a year ago. She was the first to dunk in a girls game and dunks on a regular basis in practice. One of my good friends and is an official has a daughter that is going to Iowa on a basketball scholarship next year and she played with Candace for a few years on an AAU team.

She is the real deal, I cannot wait to see what she is going to do at Tennessee.

Peace

I think people's memories are short when it comes to great players. All the ESPN announcers exclaiming that Taurasi is the best ever are selling Chamique Holdsclaw short.

I'll be the first in the forum to say that Candace Parker will be the greatest women's basketball player ever to play the game!

I've seen her play enough to know that she has skills and abilities that are unbelievable for a 6' 4" player. Pat Summit has already said that Candace is the most complete/developed player she has ever seen.

Keep in mind that she is just 8 months removed from tearing her ACL during a summer league..........

And Sheryl Swoops.........Cheryl Miller etc.. Sue Bird was a great college player, Jackie Stiles. the list goes on and on. I would have to have Taurasi and Holdsclaw near the VERY top!

Cheryl Miller was just an amazing ballplayer in her day. Even had an NBA try-out. Absolutely dominated. It was written in the sports pages more than a few times that she was better than her little brother. Of course, maybe that was written just to piss off Reggie.:D

Which means that she is probably also 8 months removed from tearing it again. :( Studies repeatedly show that women are much more susceptible to this type of injury than men. I hope it doesn't bite her again.

And representing western Mass was Rebecca Lobo, a fantastic college player. When she was in college, many people included her in this "Top 10" discussion. Unfortunately, her pro career has been severely hampered by repeated injury (see my previous post). :(

We'll see. I am not inclined toward such pronouncements til they show what they can do on the big stage. There is a lot of talent out there right now - Beard and Currie at Duke, Taurasi, Mazzante, a ton of people in the pros already. HS and AAU can point toward greatness, but you only really know when they play the game at the next two levels.

I am not trying to be sexist, but there is no way that Candice Parker shouold win this dunk competition. Have any of you actually watched it on tv, or have you just read about it? The men are going up doing some nice looking dunks, you know windmill, spinning, cool looking stuff like that. Then Parker comes along, she has 3 dunks in the first round. She misses one of them and the other two she makes, but they are just standard jump of the left foot and dunk with the right hand. She did that dunk twice. Then in the finals she gets 4 dunks. She misses one and makes three. Two of them are again standard one hand dunks. Then on her last one, she covers her eyes when she is running towards the basket, but when she jumps she moves her hand off her eyes and she dunks it, again the standard off one foot dunk. I understnad the guys missed a few dunks which cut their point totals, but there is no way she should have won. She did nothing exciting or out of the ordinary. The only thing she had going for her is she was a woman. If any guy did the dunks she did he would not have won.

LDUB,

I agree with you. But the guys need to just make a dunk or two and they probably would have beat her. I think they spent more time trying to be overly spectacular instead of doing things they were capable of doing.

It is their own fault. But I have to admit I was thinking many of the same things. But I still think the girl is an amazing player. She just did not get much of a challenge from the boys that were in the contest. But that is not her fault. ;)

Peace

that girl was tight but the guy wasn't he could do good dunks in the all star game but not on the dunk contest what's wrong with that

I would like to think that the judges based their scores on the amount of skill involved in the dunks. Skill wise, yes the men were leaps and bounds better than her but, how many girls can do what she did? Only a hand full thus leading the judges to give her higher scores IMO. If a male would have ran up and dunked it one handed then obviously they would have scored 5' & 6's instead of 8's & 9's. I agree with whoever said that the men needed to complete the dunks. All that razzle dazzle goes for nothing if the ball doesn't go through the hoop!

It's all about the razzel dazzel!
 

Dunk contests stink anyway, boring. Wish they would do away with it.

Just being a young woman who dunked was both exciting and out of the ordinary. That's why she won.

So, what we're all saying is that this dunk contest was won with affirmative action? I'm sorry, this stinks. She got extra points for being a girl. Should they give Annika Sorenstam a handicap when she golfs with the guys? If a woman can compete with the guys, I'm all for it. But not if she has to get points for being female.

I'll give you out of the ordinary, but it was FAR from exciting. This is along those lines of discussions I have with my wife when we discuss men in sports and women in sports. She is always talking about how Flo Jo would whoop my a**. Of course she would, she is a world class athlete and I am not, how ever when you compare apples to apples as opposed to apples to overripe and brown bananas (me) you get a completely different story. I'll take nothing away from female athletes, but when you put the best against the best in most sports, the male will dominate. That is not a sexist comment it is just a fact.

ESPN did a piece the other day about the men who participate in the practice squads for womens' college teams. Pat Summit summed it up well, (paraphrase) "We play them because they're better than we are." Note, these are guys who don't get scholarships, don't get money, can't travel with the team. All they get out of it is excercise and competition. Why is that relevant, because they guys that have much talent are playing on scholarship somewhere. The best college women basketball players in the world are playing against guys who couldn't make a D3 team (generalization alert); and they're still getting beat in practice. (I make that assumption based on the fact that it wasn't addressed in the television segment.)

Adam

LDUB is right, If a guy had done the dunks that she did the crowd would have booed him. Her dunks were off of one foot and with one hand and with no authority. I read on espn.com the other day that she did an "exact replica" of Dee Brown's dunk in 91, apparently Dee Brown jumped off of one foot covering his eyes while he was on the ground and then looked directly at the basket while getting barely up high enough to do a weak dunk. Women's sports for the most part disgust me. Women should shouldn't try to act masculinely like men, it doesn't make sense genetically. It's the same thing as a man acting feminine like he's female aka crossdressers, drag queens. Politically correct brainwashing is really something. Maybe a drag queen will win the Miss America Pageant this year even though all of the other contestants were better, but hey, the drag queen is a man so cut him some slack.

I agree!!! Damn country started to go to hell in a handbasket as soon as we gave wimmen the vote. And don't get me started about letting 'em drive either. My God!

Funny!! ;)

Peace

This is sarcasm, right?

Not?!?! Could you just flag the rock you crawled out from under, so I can avoid it? Thank you.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...hitlock/040401


Article on the dunk contest and women in sports.

Just do not want you to be repetitive.
 

W_sohl already posted this article. It was in the "Perfect perspective on C. Parker Dunk" post.

Peace

I didn't realize that Paul Hornung posts on our forum :p

Actually I'm Charles Barkley.

Sorry, but I did watch the contest. I saw it the first night the program aired. Then watched it again when they replayed it. She won because of the format of the contest, not because her dunks were better than other successful dunks.

Peace

Yeah, but she made it out of the 1st round only b/c she was a girl.

But on a more important note, who the dexter really cares?!?! I can't believe that a girl in a dunking contest has generated 3 pages of posts. It's a dextering dunk contest, people!! When's the last time anybody cared about a dunk contest? Even the NBA's? You think the dunk judges are bound by some code of ethics?

Are you worried that the social mores of the country will be undone b/c this talented young woman got a pass so that she could be showcased on a cable tv program that about 100,000 people watched? Get over it. She won. Who cares?

Kinda interesting column on the subject.

http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southt...k/x03-bar1.htm

Chuck, as an ex-girl,I thank you for sticking up for us, I think?

I dunno, Chuck - as Sen. Brownback of Kansas would say, this puts us on a slippery moral slope. :p

Juulie, I'm not sticking up for anyone. I'm merely saying that getting worked up about this issue is the same as arguing over whether the 4th graders or the 5th graders won the snowball fight at recess.

Well that is what many of us think about your constant baseball talks. But you continue to have them over and over and over again. At least this is about the sport on the board with the appropriate name. Deal with it like many of us deal with the 8 pages of post about how sorry the Red Sox are. Which they are losing again to Baltimore. ;)

Peace

Say Chuck, we haven't discussed baseball for a while now.

Too bad about the Sox tonight...but they have 161 more games to make that up. This seems like a good place to discuss each and every single game.

Chuck, it IS sticking up for us. You are saying that there is absolutely no interest or meaning to a discussion of whether or not girls should be allowed to enter a dunk contest. That's treating us as equals, and that's way more dignity than muresan feels we deserve. In the end, women can argue and demonstrate and struggle for equality all we want to, but until there are a least a few men saying to other men that we are right, it is meaningless effort. I'm thanking you for being one of the "good guys."

juulie
muresan's argument that girls should never play "boys" sports is flat out ridiculous, so that's probably why chuck's comment doesn't feel much to him like he is defending anything.

Juulie, I really am one of the good guys ;) , but not for the reason you stated above. I wasn't trying to say what you wrote. I was saying that there's no meaning or relevance to the dunk contest itself. So discussion of who was in it or who won is a waste of breath. Maybe I should have said it's like arguing about whether the girls or the boys won the snowball fight. Nobody cares who won; not even the people in the snowball fight. They were just hacking around, having fun. The slam dunk contest is the same thing, IMO.

I agree that the men did miss their dunks. All of Parker's dunks deserved no more than a 1, except the last one which might have gotten a 3 or so. Anyone in their right mind who watched the competiton would agree that a dunk by Ms. Parker would be given more points than a man who did the exact same dunk. Lets add this up now.

Parker - 3 dunks made. Scores 1, 1, 3. Total 5 points. Mutiply by 8 judges equals 40 points.

Any of the Men. Make one halfway decent dunk and miss the other two. Scores 0, 0, 6. Mutiply by 8 judges equals 48 points.

Something seems wrong here.

But I ask you why was she in the contest? Ummmm... It was obviously because of her awesome dunking skills....I know it was because she was a woman. I'm not saying this is a bad thing though. I did enjoy watching her dunk, it is not something you see every day. But please, do not tell me she should have won the contest. She should have never made it past the first round.

Yea, okay, I see. And I definitely agree about the contest. What's the smilie for a big yawn?

I would dispute this!! I've heard this claim several times now and not convinced of its truth! In Indianapolis, we have a girl who has dunked in a game both this year AND last year. Her name is Amber Harris; she plays for Indianapolis North Central; and she is a 6'5" SOPHOMORE! This summer, there will be SEVERAL suitors after her services for college. She dunks in practice all the time...just as she has done so a few times during games. As a matter of fact, she missed a dunk attempt in the state championship game this year as her team won the 4A state title.

I would like to know who could verify that Miss Parker dunked BEFORE Miss Harris. IF Parker did dunk first, then Harris MUST be the YOUNGEST girl to dunk in a girls' game!

Didn't Cheryl Miller, Reggie's sister, dunk in college? Maybe college doesn't count in this discussion.

Candice Parker is not the first to dunk in a game at any level - clearly this has happened in college. Michelle Snow did it on three different occasions, but she is just the most recent example, and maybe the most prolific. I'm not sure why she doesn't have more actually - Tennessee generates a lot of break opportunities, you would think she would have gotten more dunks in her career.

I think that Parker is supposed to have been the first to do it in HS, and I do believe she did it before this year - jrut could probably answer that more definitively. He lives and refs in her neck of the woods (or asphalt!).

All I was trying to say is this:

1-she unfairly won, it was bs. Chuck, I know it's not life or death but a lot of people enjoy a good dunk contest and don't like to have it ruined.

2-I don't have a problem with women playing basketball. I just don't like to see women trying to act like men in order to be good, and in basketball, you have to act masculinely aka like a man, to be really good. Honestly, what do you think about women playing football, an even more masculine sport(not just kickers)? female bodybuilders who look really muscular like men, what about that? I don't care if some individuals partake in these endeavors, I just don't think that everybody should act this way and therefore it shouldn't be promoted. Would it be alright with you if the world was nothing but overly muscular female bodybuilders and very feminine drag queens?

Right. Why can't we just go back to the days when men were <i>real</i> men, women were <i>real</i> women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were <i>real</i> small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri?

Personally I think that it's cute, but I do agree that they shouldn't really be allowed to have muscles. I don't care what it says in the Constitution about the right to bare arms either. Everybody knows that the Constitution was never meant to include wimmen. If wimmen do have muscles, they should be made to wear long-sleeve shirts, the way that God intended! They should also be made to wear bustles while participating in sports too, strictly as a safety measure.

Men are from Earth. And wimmen are from Earth also. And that's gotta change, damnit!

[Edited by Jurassic Referee on Apr 7th, 2004 at 04:21 AM]

Ya know, this board reminds me of Lake Wobegon.

Where the women are strong,
The men are good looking*,
And the children are above average.


* Except Chuck - his picture is one of the scariest ones I've ever seen.

* Except Chuck - his picture is one of the scariest ones I've ever seen.

[/B][/QUOTE]Right. Small, furry creature.
http://www.sodamnfunny.com/Picture/Animal/photo7.jpg

If that is a female squirrel she is acting to masculinely for my taste.

Fit people look good
 

Bodybuilders and basketball players are apples and oranges. I don't personally find the bodybuilder look to be an attractive look - I personally think it is somewhat freakish in nature, be it a male or a female. This is not to insult anyone, just a personal taste thing. The bodybuilder physique is at the extreme end of fitness. It is, however, more attractive than the obese physique.

Basketball players generally do not look like bodybuilders. They generally look like fit athletes, and I find that to be an attractive quality in people, as does most of society.

I know that playing ball has contributed to several of my larger players losing between 10 and 20 pounds over the winter because they ran hard for 6 days per week and lifted weights. They did all this without having an eating disoder or using diet pills - they just got more physically fit, the right way to lose weight. In general, I would guess they most guys their age find them more attractive now then when they were carrying that extra weight. Having seen them in formal dress as well, I can say that they dress up quite well and don't look like men in girls clothes (they aren't steroid pumped E. German women!). I don't think that their boyfriends object to their appearance in the slightest - just their parents, who have to fend off all the boys who have an interest in their daughters.

Re: Fit people look good
 

Maybe muresan is calling the grapes a little sour?

So, coach, you're saying I shouldn't let my 4 year old play basketball when she gets older? Otherwise, preventing her from dating before she turns 21 will be more difficult?

If you want to really prevent your daughter from dating, take that ball away and sit her down in front of the TV with a jumbo bag of Fritos and a box of Twinkies. Repeat daily.

LOL, no thanks, coach. I think I'll take my chances. I'm confident I can handle the boys.