Connaughton First Irish Player In Three Decades To Compete In Dunk Contest
On Monday, NBA Insider Shams Charania broke the news that former Notre Dame men's basketball player and current Milwaukee Bucks shooting guard Pat Connaughton is participating in the 2020 NBA Dunk Contest on Feb. 15 in Chicago.
For Fighting Irish fans, this news wasn't surprising. Connaughton's leaping ability and knack for throwing down thunderous dunks is well documented, dating back to his time in South Bend, but he put an exclamation point on his athleticism at the NBA Combine in 2015 when he recorded the second-highest vertical jump in the history of the event at 44 inches.
“Who says Irish guys can’t jump?” said ESPN's Fran Fraschilla during the broadcast.
Still, as ESPN's The Undefeated pointed out last month, players and fans unaccustomed to Connaughton's vertical still get surprised to see him jump out of the gym because of his complexion.
This allows for an element of surprise in his game, which appears to only motivate Connaughton.
“To be able to [dunk] and to be able to catch people off guard and to be able to make people shocked at how high I could jump was something I always took pride in,” he told The Undefeated.
But while Connaughton is breaking stereotypes by competing in the dunk contest, he's also accomplishing a feat no former Notre Dame Men's Basketball player has since 1985.
Orlando Woolridge, a Sporting News Second-Team All-American at Notre Dame in 1981, participated in the NBA's inaugural dunk contest in 1984 and 1985 as a member of the Chicago Bulls.
"I remember Woolridge stood out. He was more of a power dunker," Michael Cooper, a fellow 1984 participant, told Bleacher Report.
He was supposed to compete again in 1986, but he was unable to due to an injury.
As a 6-9 power forward, Woolridge was known as one of the NBA's most ferocious dunkers and during the 1984 contest, the announcer introduced him as the player voted most likely to shatter the backboard.
Unfortunately, he failed to make it out of the first round of the dunk contest in both 1984 and 1985.
To his credit, the contests were much more competitive in the early years than the event is today. Woolridge went up against at least seven other players and the best of the best competed against him, including Hall-of-Famers Michael Jordan, Dominque Wilkins Julius Irving, Ralph Sampson and Clyde Drexler.
Connaughton's competition won't be as stiff. He will face just three others in Aaron Gordon of the Orlando Magic, Derrick Jones Jr. of the Phoenix Suns and Dwight Howard of the Los Angeles Lakers. Of the four participants, Dwight Howard is the only one to have won a dunk contest, although Gordon came extremely close in 2016 and would have won in almost any other season.
With that said, Connaughton is considered the longshot to win, but that shouldn't dimish this accomplishment for him or the Notre Dame Men's Basketball program.
"Is my work finally down here? Seriously, come on," Brey said. "There's a Notre Dame guy in the dunk contest. That's it. What else is there to do at Notre Dame? Okay, we didn't get back to a final four yet. I guess we'll keep trying. But seriously, that is the most awesome thing. I heard it about a month ago that he may have a shot at it."
On the day of the dunk contest, Notre Dame plays out of town, otherwise, Brey says he would have made the trip to Chicago.
"I texted him this morning. I said, 'if we weren't playing at four o'clock in Durham, how about I'm one of your props," Brey said. "''You jump over your old coach and dunk.'"
But even without Brey there for Connaughton to jump over, the former Fighting Irish star should not be counted out. He's made a career out of surprising people, from picking basketball over a lucrative baseball career to hammering home monstrous dunks in front of unsuspecting crowds.
Connaughton is also a serious competitor, with a win at all costs mentality.
"It's fun raising some eyebrows when all of a sudden you jump up and you get a tip dunk or you dunk on Jabari Parker and everyone's like, 'where, where did that come from?'" Connaughton said at the 2015 NBA Combine. "It's something that my teammates, my friends and people around the teams that I have played on know I can do, but it wasn't necessarily something I had to do for school. Not many people know about it.
"I was willing to sacrifice making some of the highlight reel play to get to the Elite Eight and to win an ACC Championship. Winning has always been the most important thing to me."
But in the dunk contest, the only way to win is to put down dunks worthy of a highlight reel, so there's no excuse for him to not put all of his athleticism and competitiveness on display.
Advantage Connaughton.
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