LOS ANGELES -- Truthfully, the only loser Saturday night was gravity.
Dennis Smith Jr. didn't win the Verizon Slam Dunk Contest, even though he did his best impression of a human flotation device on perhaps the night's single best slam.
A jaw-dropping procession of throw-downs by Smith, Cleveland's Larry Nance Jr. and winner Donovan Mitchell of Utah provided plenty of fun, but Smith left only with a third-place finish after his first dunk was judged too low to let his outrageous perfect-score second dunk to make up for.
"I did some dunks," Smith said in his best aw-shucks voice.