Last December was the French All Star Game, the best native players against the foreign players of our 1st pro division (Pro A). Around 15 000 fans gathered in Paris, not only for a simple basketball game but also for the main attraction : the dunk contest. As it is broadcasted on National TV, some great dunkers like Kadour Ziani, the De Blaine brothers, Steve Lobel or Guy Dupuy entered in our dunk ” hall of fame” and basketball history.
Each year there’s a big emulation on “who’s gonna compete ? what each guy is able to do…” , this edition was special because two great well known high flyers came from the States : Kevin ” Golden Child ” Kemp and Justin Darlington. I went lucky to get in the backstages of this contest so just enjoy the pictures and video below.

Justin Darlington, Nobel Boungou Colo , Kevin Kemp, Max Kouguere, Yann de Blaine

The pressure started to increase in the locker !

Warm up, maybe not the best conditions for such contest but each dunker had to manage the same problem.

Walking through long corridors before entering the arena.

The contest was about to start when the drama happened, the kid we were all waiting, Golden Child, injured his two legs on his first dunk at the warm up ! We thought it was a joke, but he was seriously suffering, a few minutes later the speaker called him for his first attempt, he tried a between the legs, missed it and directly stopped the contest.

Justin Darlington crossed the Atlantic, did his thing to win the contest, unfortunately we didn’t see his signature moves but the show was good enough to wave the crowd.
Anyway the contest was dope thanks to the dunkers of course but especially the involvement of Kadour ” The dunkfather” Ziani and the people from Nike France who made this possible and gave me access to the court.