Ranking the NBA's Worst Missed Dunks of All Time

Several weeks ago, we ranked the best in-game dunkers of all time. There's another side to that coin, though. 

When you attempt to dunk as much as many NBA players do, you're bound to misstep every so often. Unfortunately, as those missteps are almost always broadcast live to millions of people, they live on forever in the minds of fans and on YouTube. 

Some missed dunks, like this one from Ja Morant over Kevin Love and this famous one by LeBron James in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, are so impressive that the audacity to attempt such a play actually heightens the dunker's reputation. Most, however, are flat-out embarrassing and at least temporarily stain the dunker's resume. 

Today, we're diving into the land of ignominy. What are the worst missed dunks of all time, and what separates them from impressive missed dunks? We'll discuss all of that, coming right up.

The Attempt: He Believes He Can Fly

Up front, we must give credit where credit is due.

JaVale McGee has done real work to salvage his career and become a serviceable NBA player for some great teams in recent years. But he became well-known thanks to countless boneheaded plays immortalized by Shaquille O'Neal and others, and those lowlights remain a major part of his front-facing persona. 

For instance, take this dunk attempt. It's ranked 10th out of 10 on this list because the timing isn't horrendous, like it is on many of the subsequent takeoffs. If there's ever an appropriate window to try to dunk from the free-throw line during a game, it's in garbage time of a blowout. In addition, the play starts out in promising fashion, with McGee making a very athletic steal on an inbounds play.  

On the other hand, the execution is so typical of early-career McGee. There's a reason he rarely dribbles anymore, and it's because he isn't very good at it (at least by NBA standards). By the time he rises up from the charity stripe here, he's lost control of the ball, and it goes flying out of his hand during the aerial journey. 

As perhaps the pre-eminent goofy player of his generation, McGee serves as a perfect starting point for this list.

The Attempt: Kobe Feels the Force

It truly happens to the best of us.

For somebody as effortlessly athletic as Kobe (lest we forget, he won the Slam Dunk Contest as a rookie), a wide-open dunk should be as easy as breathing, so it's stunning to see him brick it at all, let alone in a close game against a competitive Wizards team. He's also clearly stunned by the rim's resistance, putting his head in his hands in a fit of shame.

If that were the entire clip, this would be ranked much higher here. However, in true Kobe fashion, he followed up a laughable mistake with an equally dazzling highlight, starting a quick fast break after a Wizards miss on the other end and throwing down a spectacular 360 jam. 

It's almost like Kobe hated making basketball errors so much that he went out of his way to make great plays as a way to erase the memory of his failures. Such was his pursuit of total greatness.

Because he immediately redeems himself in eye-popping fashion, Kobe's dud is only so embarrassing. But his presence here at all reminds us that NBA superstars are human, too.

Every so often, Kobe missed a dunk in the exact same fashion as we might while attempting a slam on the playground, inadvertently making himself more relatable in the process.

The Attempt: It's Too Good to Be True

This is a tough break for Timofey Mozgov.

As soon as he rolls to the rim and catches the pass from Kyrie Irving, the entire Sacramento defense immediately parts, as if challenging him to dunk. Somehow, that (perhaps inadvertent) psychological trick worked, as Mozgov both traveled and took off from too far away to complete the throw-down.

Thankfully, just like McGee, the timing of this missed dunk makes it slightly less embarrassing for Mozgov. It's the fourth quarter of a 20-point blowout, and the Cavaliers—who, later that season, would win a title—are playing the Kings, so it's not as if Sacramento was going to come back.

But it's always more humiliating to get stuffed by the rim than to clang it off the back iron, as it subtly implies the dunker misjudged his flight and/or isn't athletic enough to pull that particular dunk off. 

We'll see much more of that type of missed dunk throughout this list, so Mozgov shouldn't feel alone in his failure. But combine this with his infamous posterization by Blake Griffin, and the big man begins to own one of the more embarrassing reputations in recent NBA history. 

A dominant center Mozgov was not, but let's not define him by two of his worst moments.

The Attempt: The Absentminded 2-Guard

Avery Bradley has gotten his career back on track with the Lakers this season, but after leaving Boston in 2017, it seemed like he might be done in the NBA. This dunk attempt is a perfect microcosm of his situation at the time.

First, this was just not Bradley's day overall.

He shot 4-of-15 from the field in this game against the Clippers, a team he'd get traded to months later as part of the blockbuster Blake Griffin deal. Second, however, it's one thing to miss a breakaway dunk. It's another to miss that dunk when it is purely functional and provides no aesthetic value, as was the case with Bradley's attempt here. 

Third, Patrick Beverley then blocks him on the second try, and while Beverley and defensive stops tend to go hand in hand, it's especially embarrassing considering nobody else is in the frame from Bradley's steal onward.

The Clippers just assumed Bradley would make the dunk, but the amount of time it took him to miss, gather the rebound and try again enabled Beverley to catch up and materially affect the outcome.

Thankfully for Bradley, the Pistons ended up winning by eight points. But making such a mistake in the second quarter of a close game could have proved costly in another scenario.

The Attempt: Getting a Little Too Excited

As he came straight from high school to the NBA, Travis Outlaw was always known as an athletic anomaly. It's just that he could never fully marshal his gifts into becoming a productive NBA player.

This dunk is a perfect summary of his career. Outlaw gets the ball in the mid-post and speeds past the surrounding Rockets defenders. There's now nobody between him and the basket, and he's a reasonable distance away to rise up.

It's unclear whether he was frustrated by his team's current 28-point deficit or just wanted to throw down an extra-explosive slam, but Outlaw decided to put way, way too much force into this particular play, jumping far too high for being so close and releasing the ball much earlier than a dunker needs to.

Somehow, he throw this ball all the way into the hands of Viktor Khryapa, who is parked firmly on the other side of the basket, and his surprise in receiving the ball matches ours while viewing the play. 

Here, Outlaw is given an open path to the basket and lets his ambition supersede practicality. While he became a good shooter and a halfway-decent defender later on, the swingman's inability to match his exciting athletic feats with carefully honed craft ended up defining his career.

The Attempt: Stick to What You Know

Oh no, Big Baby Davis.

While Davis was a key role player during the Big Three era in Boston, his heft and lack of athleticism often made for awkward moments like the one above. 

This particular sequence is especially unfortunate based on its high-stakes nature. This was not a playoff game, but it did take place against the Miami Heatles, and those two teams' matchups almost always featured playoff-level intensity.

So, when Davis steals the ball from Dwyane Wade and hustles toward the Celtics goal, he's thinking about all that pressure, the fact that Miami is currently winning by one and that Chris Bosh is tracking close behind him.

All that coalesces in a cringe-worthy, one-footed leap that gets stuck on the front of the rim.

For a guy who was known as an interior bully, it's interesting that Davis wasn't a great dunker, though it's understandable why he wanted to try here. Considering the rarity of Davis' dunks, completing one against a rival like the Heat could send the crowd into a frenzy and give the Celtics an insurmountable home-court advantage for the rest of the game. 

But alas, he couldn't seal the deal, though Boston thankfully won by three points anyway.

The Attempt: Salley Gets Two-Timed

This is just never what you want.

John Salley, a four-time NBA champion and very credible big man in his day, has two easy shots at a dunk here and botches both. 

On attempt No 1, he gets the ball from Vinnie Johnson, and though there's some resistance from Scottie Pippen, he has a clear path to the basket. Somehow, Salley momentarily loses his depth perception and sticks the ball on the underside of the rim.

But we're just getting started here.

Quickly, Salley gets his own rebound and is now encountering even less resistance despite several Bulls continuing to linger in the paint. He's got a point-blank dunk opportunity with nobody in his way, and somehow attempt No. 2 is off the mark as well.

The ball hits the back iron, and its momentum carries it out toward the three-point line, essentially resetting the play.

The context of Salley's miss is especially notable. Though it's hard to discern what specific game this was, it was obviously a matchup between Salley's Bad Boy Pistons and Michael Jordan's pre-title Chicago Bulls, a rivalry discussed in detail during this week's episodes of The Last Dance.

These two squads fought tooth and nail for every advantage, so for Salley to squander such easy opportunities is even more unfortunate for him and the Pistons.

The Attempt: Ricky Being Ricky

Ricky Davis was Dion Waiters before Dion Waiters.

Though a productive player on several teams, his self-belief was so inflated that he was convinced he could do no wrong on the court. This is the same guy who purposely missed a shot on the wrong basket so he could get a triple-double, only to later learn that his cheap rebound attempt didn't count. 

Even considering that failed triple-double, this missed dunk might be the most egoistic thing Davis ever did on the floor.

With the Celtics trailing by eight in the third quarter against the archrival Lakers, Davis steals a pass and tries a flashy between-the-legs finish. Always style over substance, Davis loses control of the ball midway through, and it flies away from him. As the Lakers ended up winning by eight as well, this is another case of a poorly timed dunk attempt.

Just save it for garbage time, Ricky!

Like Kobe earlier, Davis quickly redeemed himself (though, in a moment of unintentional comedy, his converted windmill was no less flashy than the original attempt), and if he hadn't done so, this miss combined with his generally mercurial attitude would have been enough to top this list. Regardless, this failed dunk is a reminder of one of the NBA's forgotten personalities. 

If Davis played today, he'd be a favorite of Twitter timelines everywhere.

The Attempt: We Should All Believe in Ourselves This Much

Much of Marreese Speights' game was predicated on hubris. He posted a career 24.8 usage percentage (which would rank above both Kyle Lowry and Chris Paul this season), rarely passed and had a tenuous relationship with defensive concepts.

This missed dunk is perhaps the apex of his self-confidence.

Though a good athlete and boasting a long wingspan, Speights decides to perform this dunk from just beyond the restricted area. Now, considering that players dunk from the free-throw line frequently, that starting point may sound easy.

But the longer the lead-up to a given dunk, the smarter it becomes to leap off of one foot, and Speights jumps with both feet here.

In addition, he seemingly fails to account for the fact that Nene, a legit starting center at the time with girth to spare, is blocking his path. While Nene was never the greatest rim protector, his sheer presence makes a two-footed dunk from this far away that much harder.

You can't blame Speights for trying. If, by some miracle, he had converted this dunk, it probably would be remembered as one of the great finishes of all time.

Instead, he misjudged all sorts of factors, physics reclaimed its dominance over the natural world, and the miss is largely forgotten except for in forums like this one.

The Attempt: Pay Attention, Dude!

If a basketball player had a nightmare about missing a dunk, it would play out similarly to Von Wafer's failed attempt here.

It's not just that he misses the dunk. That happens sometimes, especially when you're trying to put an exclamation point on the finish. It's the fact that Wafer thinks he made the dunk, takes a few seconds to flex on the crowd while play continues, turns around and immediately runs into an unsuspecting Jermaine O'Neal, who is so startled that he travels and turns the ball over.

Oh, and the most important part here? We're in overtime, and the Celtics lead the Wizards by just two points.

Not to get mean, but let's twist the knife a bit deeper. The Wizards end up winning this game 95-94.

There is a credible argument—even if Wafer missed the dunk—that had he remained engaged in the game for those precious moments instead of prematurely celebrating and causing a turnover, the Celtics could have made an extra basket on that possession, giving them the win.

The dunk attempt itself is not that cringeworthy, but considering the context surrounding Wafer's miss and how the game ended, you'd be hard-pressed to find a worse missed dunk in NBA history.