Stephen A. Smith: LeBron James is Directly Responsible For Ruining the Slam Dunk Contest

Football is over and the Super Bowl storylines have all been exhausted, so this week's sports talk focus is how to fix NBA All-Star Weekend. Not all of it needs fixing; everybody likes the three-point contest, which is the only general consensus to be seen in this discussion. But the All-Star Game, obviously, needs a lot of work to become entertaining again. Much of the hubbub has been centered around possible solutions because Sunday night's iteration was the worst yet, with 211 points scored by the winning team and over 150 three-point attempts throw up there.

Do not worry, though-- people are still mad about the dunk contest, too. It has been a talking point for years now that big stars don't participate and the dunks themselves have gotten worse. The Zach LaVine-Aaron Gordon duel in 2016 was incredible and also the last dunk contest to approach something resembling "good." Jaylen Brown became the first All-Star in five years to participate in the contest last weekend, which counts for something, but he underwhelmed.

Stephen A. Smith believes all this to be the fault of LeBron James and solely LeBron James, arguing on Monday that The King's refusal to participate interrupted a tradition of high-flying superstars doing it at least once. This, therefore, ruined the entire event.

Whether or not you agree about the ramifications, it is indeed one of the biggest disappointments in sports that LeBron never did the dunk contest. He's a top-five athlete to ever be in the NBA and it sucks so badly that we never got to see him freestyle in the dunk contest. Imagine the things his mind, coordination, and athleticism could allow him to do. LeBron very well could've gone down as the greatest participant in history. But he never did it and we're all worse off for it.

Now, it's obviously absurd to lay the blame of 20 years' worth of failures at the feet of one man. It is especially absurd when you consider the dunk contest was already struggling when LeBron came into the league. The 2000 dunk contest is either the best ever or the second-best ever, featuring Vince Carter's show-stopping performance. But the year after that, the most famous participant was Baron Davis and zero-time All-Star Desmond Mason won. The year before, there wasn't a dunk contest before the lockout. And the year before that the dunk contest was eliminated from All-Star Weekend entirely in favor of something called a 2 Ball Competition with WNBA players because the 1997 contest that Kobe Bryant won was so bad. The first year LeBron was eligible for the dunk contest, some guy named Fred Jones won.

The point is that the problems with the dunk contest came into existence well before LeBron James entered the NBA. Maybe he could have saved it by showing up once. It's hard to believe that, though.