Bam Adebayo is a pretty good dunker. He’s not an insane acrobat like his teammate Derrick Jones Jr., but he can get up when he wants to, and, as you can see from this video, “when he wants to” is fairly often. Since his reputation as a dunk machine is pretty well established at this point, the commentary accompanying his dunks needs to be at the same high level as the dunks themselves.
It’s easy for me to talk about this stuff, since I’m the one who can spend hours typing out the perfect words to convey my thoughts, while the team commentators have to come up with stuff within a second of that stuff taking place, but I’m just going to offer my thoughts on how Bam’s dunks could and should be called going forward. And I’m going to offer these thoughts in DTB’S OFFICIAL LIST FORMAT since weaving all this into a single narrative would be too difficult.
“BAM WITH THE SLAM”: This is what Eric Reid defaults to most of the time. This works from a “providing in-game commentary” perspective, since it describes the action that is taking place on the court. However, it’s not quite as creative as I would like. In Bam’s rookie season, Reid got dependent on this phrase and in the end he ruined it from overuse.
BAM SLAM: This is a simple adjustment to the above phrasing that turns it from descriptive to proscriptive. Bam is not just slamming the ball; Bam is executing a “Bam Slam”. Simple. Effective. To the point. Eric Reid does say this one sometimes, depending on the mood he’s in. (hint: he’s always in a bad mood because the Heat organization canned his longtime broadcasting partner Tony Fiorentino for literally no reason and replaced him with some painfully generic dude named John Crotty)
THE BAMHAMMER: I came up with this one and it’s the best. In case you’re not a real gamer like me, the “banhammer” is a mythical weapon wielded by moderators of online communities. When the banhammer is swung, the person hit with the banhammer gets banned from the community. It’s a fun mental image for the not-so-fun task of banning all the idiots, cheaters, and trolls that online communities tend to attract. And now it’s being applied to the game of basketball. When Bam throws down the Bamhammer, he’s symbolically banning the opposing team from being respected or admired in any way. The Bamhammer signifies Bam’s unrivaled power and complete dominance over his foes. Eric Reid should be using this one at least once a game, and if he won’t, then Mr. Generic Second Commentator Dude should make himself useful by interrupting Reid and saying it for him.
Bonus reason why the Bamhammer is the best thing on this list (remember I came up with it so I’m a genius): dunks are already referred to as “hammers” in the parlance of our times. So it’s clever, relevant, and topical in TWO ways. I win.
COLLATERAL BAMMAGE: Another great one that is my own original creation. “Collateral damage” is a wartime phenomenon where people get killed and things get blown up that neither side really intended to kill or blow up. Bam isn’t actually killing anybody or blowing anything up by dunking a basketball during a sanctioned sporting contest where the proceedings are carefully observed by three referees, but he kinda is. He’s killing the will of his opponents to keep trying to defend him and he’s blowing up the rim with his furious dunkage.
WHAM BAM THANK YOU BAM: This one veers off more into “announcing” territory as opposed to “this is a nickname for a Bam Adebayo slam dunk” territory. Playing off of the old-timey phrase “wham bam thank you ma’am” (denoting a quickly-concluded sexual encounter), saying this one on air might offend some people with delicate sensibilities. Then again, people with delicate sensibilities aren’t going to tune in to Heat games anyway because they’d be constantly assaulted by filthy, obscene slam dunks from the likes of Adebayo, DJJ, and Kelly Olynyk.
“KABAM!!”: The word “kablam” is an onomatopoeia for the sound of explosion. By dropping the “L” from the word, it becomes Bam-specific while still sounding like an explosion. In case you missed the connection here, Bam’s dunks are very explosive, hence the comparison to the sound of an explosion. I can’t believe I had to spell all that out for you.
(if you want my opinion, which you obviously do since you’ve read this far into the description, the Nickelodeon show “Kablam!” wasn’t even that good. The only good segments were Sniz and Fondue, Action League Now!, and Prometheus and Bob. That one with that pigtailed girl (Loopy?) sucked. The announcer characters sucked. And that’s all I have to say about that.)
In conclusion, this dunkilation would have been a lot better if I got to announce all the dunks. But I don’t have a good radio voice so they’d have to do some post-processing on my voice while I yelled “BAM WITH THE BANHAMMER” at the top of my lungs.