Each year, the Spalding Hoophall Classic brings one of the best crops of high school basketball teams together for a top notch tournament featuring a number of the nation's top prospects. Those upper crust athletes also face off in a dunk contest on Martin Luther King day, and the event rarely disappoints.
Luckily for all of us, the 2012 dunkathon lived up to the hype, with the slam that stole top honors more about a miraculous assist than it was about the finishing flush.
As you can see in the highlight reel above from MassLive.com, Santa Ana (Calif.) Mater Dei sophomore power forward Stanley Johnson won the 2012 Hoophall dunk contest with a finish of an assist from teammate Katin Reinhardt that came, quite literally, from the near the top row of the entire arena.
Reinhardt -- who has turned heads with his notable dishes before -- threw up a point perfect pass from the stands, with Johnson receiving the ball at shoulder level and finishing a powerful jam just as his head soared up toward the rim.
Was Johnson's jam the most difficult? Probably not for him, though it definitely had the highest degree of difficulty. Reinhardt's bounce pass was practically taken straight out of that old McDonald's commercial with Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. You know the one.
Still, Johnson's signature slam was only one of a host of incredible dunks put down by some of prep hoops' best. Haverhill (N.H.) New Hampton Prep sophomore Noah Vonley dumped in a pair of notable slams, while even he was outdone by Fitchburg (Mass.) Notre Dame Prep star Adonis Filer, who dropped in a full trio of breathtaking jams.
Of course, considering the fact that Filer -- who is currently on a post grad year at Notre Dame Prep before arriving at Clemson next year -- is a full three years older than both Vonley and Johnson, perhaps he should be expected to stand out as he did.
Regardless, even Filer's heroics couldn't stand up to Johnson's athleticism and Reinhardt's precision passing, or at least a combination of those two tantalizing attributes.
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