Just when you thought that the high school basketball all-star games had cranked out all the ridiculous dunks imaginable, a top prospect goes out and mixes gymnastics with basketball to turn out a pretty remarkable slam.
The player you see winning a dunk contest in the video above -- which was first dug up by Rivals.com Louisville affiliate CardinalSports -- is Marcus Smart, one of the nation's top small forward prospects headed for Oklahoma State in fall 2012. For now Smart is still technically representing Flower Mound (Texas) Marcus High School, the squad he starred for over the past two years and led to a state title as a senior.
Usually, Smart is the best athlete on the court by a mile. Yet, in the Kentucky Derby Festival All-Star Classic Dunk Contest, Smart found himself pitted against Louisville signee Terry Rozier, the Shaker Heights (Ohio) High superstar who had wowed the crowd with a series of earlier dunks.
Smart was going to have to pull off something special to win the event, so he ad-libbed a slam that would showcase his freakish athleticism. First, Smart completed a full forward flip in stride, then took a pitch-perfect alley-oop off the backboard and finished with a full reverse flush.
In short, it was one heck of a dunk.
Rozier made a valiant attempt to upstage Smart's acrobatic heroics, trying a one-handed slam with a take-off from just one step inside the foul line, but the distance slam fell short twice in a row, leaving the future Cardinal little choice but to finish with a surefire slam. In his case, it was a 360 dunk from the wing.
Naturally, as impressive as that was, it couldn't compare to Smart's dunk, handing the contest title to the future Cowboy, thanks to one acrobatic and inventive slam.
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