The 2011 slam dunk contest will always be remembered for Blake Griffin’s now famous dunk. However, Griffin says it didn’t go quite as he intended.
Who could forget? While being serenaded by a choir, Griffin took off, jumped over the hood of a Kia Optima, dunked with an assist from Baron Davis, and stood on the hood when he was finished. Spike Lee went nuts. The moment was turned into a commercial. Those who didn’t know who the Clippers rookie was, now knew.
Fast forward a few years and we find out Griffin originally planned to jump over a convertible. Griffin recently joined Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take podcast and said if he was going to dunk over a car it had to be an Optima.
“I wanted to jump over a convertible, but I wasn’t allowed to. It had to be a Kia Optima,” Griffin said, as transcribed by Sports Illustrated. “I wanted to have Baron Davis and some of my teammates roll out in a convertible, and then just toss it straight up and jump over the whole thing, instead of just the hood.
“I don’t know if you guys have stood next to a Kia Optima, but it’s a pretty tall vehicle, and there’s no way I was going to make it over the entire thing, over Baron Davis in the sunroof,” Griffin continued. “So I opted for the hood, and then everyone was pissed that I jumped over the hood, like, ‘that was super easy,’ so it was just a lose-lose situation for me.”
While Griffin dunking over a convertible full of teammates would have been cooler to see, it obviously wasn’t going to happen with Kia being a partner of the NBA. Griffin was criticized afterward, mostly because he made the dunk look so easy. However, the auto manufacturer signed the Clippers forward to a sponsorship deal so it wasn’t that much of a lose-lose situation.
