Optimism and confidence are two of the most important things in professional sports. It's how athletes have the ability to pull off some of the most impressive things we see on a nightly basis. It's the reason these athletes have made it to the place in life in which someone is willing to pay them to play a sport for a living.
That optimism is sometimes detrimental though, such as was the case in the Chinese Basketball Association's dunk contest. This dunker had the optimistic thought of jumping over five people as props to deliver a two-handed dunk. It's something we've seen before but it's impressive any time it's pulled off.
As you can see above, it wasn't pulled off. Let's break down the moment it went poorly:
In the first frame below, you can see that the dunker plants his feet in the right area you'd want on a dunk attempt like this. You have to go off two feet because you're unlikely to generate the power and lift in your jump over five people by going off just one foot. He's also perfectly balanced to generate lift and power through his entire body on the jump.
In this next frame, I show the problem with the dunk attempt though.
As you can see in this shot of the attempt, you can pinpoint that there are indeed five people in which the dunker has to jump over and considering he doesn't even clear one of them, it looks like the optimism of jumping over five times the one person he can't clear is a bit of a bad decision.
See? There are five people there. That's just a bad combination.
The landing reminded me of two things:
1.
2.
It was close though. Missed it by that much.
(H/T - Jake Pavorsky)
