Yahoo Finance Pistons rookie Sekou Doumboya covers Blake Griffin's absence with dunk of the year contender
In just his 11th career game and fourth playing actual minutes, 19-year-old Detroit Pistons rookie Sekou Doumbouya threw down a grown-man dunk.
In the first quarter of the Pistons’ game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday, Doumboya took flight and put Tristan Thompson on a poster. Then he stood over the Cavaliers veteran.
The dunk was ferocious enough that the Pistons went ahead and called it the dunk of the decade, which we guess is defensible when the decade is a week old.
.@sekou_doums DUNK OF THE DECADE.#PistonsNow powered by @RocketFiber pic.twitter.com/hPwSpUYw7O
— Detroit Pistons (@DetroitPistons) January 8, 2020
The Pistons selected Doumboya with the 15th overall pick in the 2019 NBA draft after a short career in the French leagues. He started his career mostly riding the bench for the Pistons, playing garbage-time minutes in just seven of the Pistons’ first 34 games and never posting double-digit minutes.
That changed when the Pistons lost star Blake Griffin to a knee injury, which resulted in surgery that has him out indefinitely. Elevated to the Pistons’ starting lineup, the 6-foot-8, 209-pound Doumboya has posted 12.3 points and 8.7 rebounds per game with two double-doubles in three games.
Obviously, Doumboya isn’t going to replace Griffin, but getting Doumboya into games and accelerating his development could work out nicely for the Pistons. There are still an enormous number of games to play before we know just what Doumboya will become in the league, though a dunk like that is a good place to start.
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