The Grizzlies Have an All-Star
Hakim Warrick
Joe Murphy/NBAE/Getty Images
Well, sort of. The league hasn’t announced yet whether Pau Gasol will make the Western Conference All-Star team, but the Grizzlies will have at least one representative at All-Star Weekend.
At the conclusion of Tuesday’s practice, Grizzlies Head Coach Mike Fratello huddled the team together and informed them that Hakim Warrick would be competing in the Sprite Rising Stars Slam Dunk competition.
Of course, Shane Battier wasted not time giving Warrick good-natured grief.
“Don’t embarrass us,” he said in the huddle, loud enough for everyone in the gym to hear.
“You don’t have to worry about that, I’m going to keep it basic,” Warrick said afterwards. “I think I’m a game dunker and it’s going to be pretty much dunks that I’ve been doing my whole life.”
However, that may have just been his modesty speaking. If Warrick’s practice dunks are any indication, “basic” isn’t a word that would adequately describe what he was attempting. Without giving anything away, after practice he was working on one dunk in particular, that if successful, would unquestionably raise the bar for his fellow competitors – New York’s Nate Robinson, Philadelphia’s Andre Iguodala and Atlanta’s Josh Smith, the reigning champion.
“I’ve got a couple of things I’m working on,” he would sheepishly admit. “It’s all timing, and (if) something works out in the pass, you get a perfect pass or something, maybe I’ll pull a spectacular dunk out.”
While he won’t make any guarantees or promises, at least one of his teammates is willing to go out on that limb for him.
“He’s going to win, there’s no question. Hakim Warrick’s the best dunker in the NBA,” said Lorenzen Wright. “As long as Ro (Anthony Roberson) doesn’t mess up the passes I think everything’s going to go fine, most definitely.”
Wright said the important thing for Warrick is not getting fancy too early in the competition, and saving his best for last.
“He just has to be smart. Those young guys, when they get into dunk contests, they don’t think too much, they try those crazy, two and three-ball dunks, and I think you should wait for that in the finale. You need to bury some dunks early… (some) nice and spectacular one ball-dunks early in the dunk contest, bury some dunks, and then in the end come with the spectacular.”
But back to Battier for a second. He said he has every right to give Warrick a hard time about the dunk competition.
“I told him before that I was the 1996 Oakland County (Michigan) Slam Dunk champion. I was, you can look it up, it’s in the archives,” he said.
So what did Battier pull out of his bag of tricks to win that competition? He pondered the question for a moment before responding.
“Words really can’t do it justice,” he said. “You can’t describe the Mona Lisa, you can’t describe the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and you can’t describe my dunks in that contest either.”
Battier claims the footage of his victory is archived on videotape, but that it’s “locked away in my vault”, an explanation that didn’t sit well with Warrick.
“He said it’s in the vault? I need to see that to believe it. He’s going to have to break it out of the vault for me to see that one.”
Somehow, that seems unlikely.
Related NBA All-Star Announcements News
Stay tuned for the following All-Star announcements:
- The Rookie All-Star team will be announced on Wednesday, February 1.
- NBA All-Star starters will be announced live on TNT on Thursday, February 2.