2. Hamidou Diallo repeats as dunk champ, plays in Rising Stars
Although he only appeared in 51 NBA games last season for a total of 526 minutes, Hamidou Diallo announced his arrival to the league by winning the Slam Dunk Contest after jumping over Shaquille O’neal.
Diallo’s athleticism is unquestionable. He is a top 1 percent athlete in the NBA, a league comprised of the top 1 percent athletes in the world. He is the elite of the elite. Just watching him on the basketball court in one of those 526 minutes will convince you of that.
For the 2019-20 season Diallo needs to figure out how to translate that unrivaled athleticism into high quality basketball play.
Last season Diallo found himself buried on the bench. At 6’5″ with decent-but-limited ball handling ability he is almost exclusively a shooting guard in the NBA.
With Russell Westbrook, Dennis Schroder, Terrance Ferguson, Abdel Nader and others on roster — along with Diallo being a rookie selected in the second round on a team with championship aspirations — he had a low likelihood of becoming a consistent rotation player.
With Westbrook and Paul George gone and Oklahoma City’s title hopes out the window Diallo will get his fair shot this year. The team will most likely want to play their younger players a substantial amount of minutes in an attempt to develop them and assess talent.
Diallo’s hyper-athletic ability and flashy dunks should land him in the NBAs dunk contest once again. The league will almost undoubtedly invite the reigning champ back to defend his crown, especially considering he is only 21 years old.
This prediction get a little bolder though..
The dunk contest will be the second event Diallo will take part in on All Star Weekend, with the first being the Rising Stars Challenge.
The Rising Stars Challenge features some of the league’s best first and second year players in their own all-star game with the teams split into U.S.-born players and the “world” team — or international players.
In order for Diallo to be selected he will have to make a significant jump in his second season in the league, including a sizable increase in his playing time and statistics.
Bonus bold prediction: The 2020 NBA Slam Dunk Contest’s final two participants will be Diallo and Zion Williamson. They’ve squared off before and a rematch on basketball’s biggest stage would provide even more fireworks.