Those of you who remember Shawn Kemp during his days with the Sonics undoubtedly remember an explosive player. Kemp had hops and he had power. He could shake the rim as well as any player during mid-90s when he played for a team that George Karl considers to be one of the best ever. That being said, he wasn’t nearly as athletic as Blake Griffin is. As you can see from the interview above with SonicsGate.org, Kemp isn’t all that impressed with Griffin and believes he was a better dunker during his day.
“Some of those dunks they’re doing are not dunks, those are what you would call slap-ins,” Kemp said. “A dunk is when you aggressively dunk the basketball and the rim bends. I guess the difference would be those are alley-oops. What I was doing are tomahawks. That’s the difference.
“The thing is, most of his dunks have to come from a running start. When you see me dunking on people you can see the vertical leap — you saw all aspects of the game, not just one aspect … I think he’s a great player. I enjoy watching him play. But he’s not as strong as Shawn Kemp is, man. He’s not as powerful as those dunks.”
Kemp also made sure to point out that Blake dunked over the hood of the Kia in last year’s Dunk Contest — not the entire car. As for the slap-in type dunks, Kemp is probably referring to the way Griffin dunked over Kendrick Perkins. The former Sonics center has a couple of points, but overall he’s being a pretty big hater. Sometimes it’s best to just let your glory days go and let a younger guy have his day.
Chest bump to I Am a GM for passing the interview along
