4) Off the second backboard
Talk about starting things off with a bang.
Mitchell was the first man up and, right off the bat, he did something we hadn’t seen before. When he brought out the second basket standard, my first thought was that he was going to crank it up to 11 (feet) a la Dwight Howard in the 2009 Slam Dunk Contest.
Instead, he launched the ball off of the second backboard — which was several feet behind the end line — caught the rock in mid-air and slammed it home, windmill-style. On its own, the dunk was solid, but catching the ball from such an unnatural angle is what put this one over the top for me.
Clearly, the first-year phenom had come to play.
Next: Dr. Dunkenstein