HOUSTON — Terrence Ross had to settle his nerves at the start of the All-Star dunk contest. By the end, he was calming down a ball boy he needed as a prop for his winning slam.
HOUSTON — Terrence Ross had to settle his nerves at the start of the All-Star dunk contest. By the end, he was calming down a ball boy he needed as a prop for his winning slam.
The 6-foot-6 Toronto rookie leapfrogged Michael Costolo, the son of Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, whipped the ball between his legs and hammered home a one-handed dunk to beat defending champion Jeremy Evans in the climax to All-Star Saturday.
“I told him the day before that I was going to jump over him, but I never told him I was going to go through the legs,” Ross said. “He was kind of nervous. When I first grabbed him, he said, ‘You’re not going to hit me, right?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not going to hit you.’”
Ross seemed to be unsure of himself in the beginning, botching his first three dunk attempts in the first round. The crowd exploded when he finally pulled it off — flicking the ball behind his back on the way up and hammering home a one-handed dunk.
He earned a perfect 50 and immediately relaxed.
“This is honestly my first really big dunk contest, so I was nervous,” said Ross, the eighth overall pick in last year’s draft out of Washington. “And not making a dunk didn’t make it easy. I had to get myself together.”
Ross earned 58 percent of the fan vote in the championship round, outdoing Evans’ prop-filled display.
Evans leaped over a painted portrait of himself and former Jazz giant Mark Eaton, who sat on a box and held up the ball for Evans to swipe on his way to the rim.
Earlier, Cleveland guard Kyrie Irving beat San Antonio’s Matt Bonner to win the 3-point contest. Irving, who will play in his first All-Star game today, hit his first seven attempts and 20 of 25 overall in the final round to finish with 23 points, two shy of the record held by Craig Hodges and Jason Kapono.