Obi Toppin: A brief history of his signature dunk

The dunk gave the Indiana Pacers an 84-77 lead but they lost 121-117 at Madison Square Garden. Toppin scored 12 points on 5-of-7 shooting in 19 minutes.

Fans couldn’t believe Toppin had the courage to do the dunk at such a key point in a big game.

“Still laughing about that Obi Toppin dunk,” one person wrote on X (Twitter). “The audacity to do that! In a playoff game! In the Garden! Against his former team!”

“That Obi Toppin dunk was legitimately jaw dropping,” another person wrote. “Guy just casually went between the legs in a playoff game and finished it clean.”

Even Toppin’s best friend and former Dayton teammate Jalen Crutcher couldn’t believe it.

“Not in the playoffs,” he wrote on Instagram.

The between-the-legs dunk is often called the “East Bay.” Isaiah Rider won the Slam Dunk Contest in 1994 with such a dunk and called it the “East Bay Funk Dunk.”

Here’s a brief history of Toppin’s East Bay dunks:

• Toppin first showed fans the between-the-legs dunk in his first season on the court as a redshirt freshman with Dayton. He did it on Dec. 29, 2018, in a 94-90 victory against Georgia Southern at UD Arena. A Dayton Daily News video of the dunk received more than 400,000 views in the next 24 hours.

Toppin scored 22 points on 9-of-10 shooting in that game. He said then it was “for sure” his greatest dunk, but he might not attempt such a dunk again in a close game after coach Anthony Grant talked to him. Dayton led by 11 after the dunk, but Georgia Southern trimmed the deficit to one point twice in the final three minutes.

“He said make sure the next time you look at the clock and see the situation we were in,” Toppin said. “I didn’t even know it was a close game. He just said be mindful of the score and the time.”

• Toppin pulled out the dunk again in his last college game on March 7, 2020. It came during a sequence of three dunks in an 82-second span late in a game against George Washington at UD Arena. It was the second-to-last dunk of a school-record 190 career dunks over two seasons.

• Toppin brought the dunk back for his first appearance in the NBA Slam Dunk Contest as a rookie in 2021 but finished second. He won the contest in his second attempt in 2022.

• Toppin showed off the Eastbay in Knicks’ Christmas Day game in 2021.

• If one of Toppin’s East Bay dunks stands out over the others, it’s the one that came in a preseason game in 2022. In his third season with the Knicks, Toppin took the ball between his legs while in the air on a fast break and dunked at Madison Square Garden in a 131-114 exhibition victory against the Pacers.

“I’ve seen a lot of great dunks,” teammate Immanuel Quickley told reporters, “but that was ridiculous.”

The dunk was a bit different than Toppin’s previous between-the-legs dunks because there was a defender, T.J. McConnell, in the vicinity. McConnell swiped at the ball as Toppin jumped in the air.

Toppin said he didn’t see McConnell until he was in the air.

“I’m like, sheesh, ‘I hope you don’t hit this ball,’” Toppin told reporters. “I was able to make it and that’s all that matters. If I do it, I’ve got to make it. There’s no missing.”

• Toppin has only missed the dunk once in a game. In February, again at Madison Square Garden, Toppin tried the dunk against his former team, the Knicks, but clanged it against the side of the rim.