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Announcers Have Heartwarming Reaction to Lonzo Ball's First Dunk in Three Years
The Chicago Bulls lost to the Washington Wizards on Wednesday, kicking off 2025 with a dud against one of the worst teams in the NBA. If one of the team's resolutions was to win more this year, well, that's not a great way to start.
Still, there were positives. Like Lonzo Ball dunking a basketball, for example. Ball hadn't dunked a basketball in an NBA game in three years. Ball had missed the last two full seasons with injuries and undergone a number of surgeries. He was back for the season opener, but then missed most of November.
But now he appears to be turning a corner. He played nine of 12 games for Chicago in December and was up to 19.1 minutes per game. And then the dunk, which was clearly a big moment. You can hear it in the voices of the announcers Adam Amin and Stacey King who immediately recognize the moment as something special and celebrate it.
According to this post on Reddit, Ball's previous dunk came on December 8, 2021 against the Cleveland Cavaliers, which would have been 1,120 days ago.
Ball finished with five points, eight rebounds and four assists, three steals and a block.
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Stephen Douglas is a senior writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He has worked in media since 2008 and now casts a wide net with coverage across all sports. Douglas spent more than a decade with The Big Lead and previously wrote for Uproxx and The Sporting News. He has three children, two degrees and one now unverified Twitter account.