Remember when Blake Griffin won the 2011 dunk contest by jumping over the hood of a Kia Optima? Of course you do, it was a formal coming out party for Griffin as the NBA’s new top flyer.
According to Griffin himself, who shared this with Barstool Sports on their Pardon My Take podcast, that was not his original idea. Griffin wanted to jump over a convertible, but wasn’t allowed to do so:
“I wanted to jump over a convertible, but I wasn’t allowed to. It had to be a Kia Optima,” Griffin said. “I wanted to have Baron Davis and some of my teammates roll out in a convertible, and then just toss it straight up and jump over the whole thing, instead of just the hood.
“I don’t know if you guys have stood next to a Kia Optima, but it’s a pretty tall vehicle, and there’s no way I was going to make it over the entire thing, over Baron Davis in the sunroof. So I opted for the hood, and then everyone was pissed that I jumped over the hood, like, ‘that was super easy,’ so it was just a lose-lose situation for me.”
Kia is the official vehicle of the NBA and Griffin endorses them, making it no surprise that it he had to use the Kia Optima for his dunk. It was met with some criticism since Griffin only jumped over the hood, but he confessed the difficulty of the dunk. Griffin still made enough noise to not only win that dunk contest against JaVale McGee but solidify himself as the league’s most electrifying dunker.
Just imagine the noise if he was allowed to use that convertible.
