Creativity was clearly the focus of this year’s Sprite Slam Dunk competition, leading up to it and during the competition itself. Imitation would not be accepted. If you didn’t bring something new to the contest, you would be staring at five NBA legends green cards with nothing but 8s on them.

Howard brought the spice tonight. And it wasn’t just spicy. It was down right impressive. Howard dominated both rounds of the competition, scoring 50s on both of his first round dunks and receiving 78 percent of the fans’ votes in the finals.

The key to Howard’s victory may have been that his two best dunks (the two he showed us in his YouTube video) were not in the same round.