Jeremy Sochan’s dunk vs. Kings named 4th best of the season

The NBA has started releasing its Top 100 Plays lists of the 2022-23 regular season, and one Spur made not only top 100, but top 5 for one of the more favorite categories. Coming in at #4 in the Top 100 Dunks category was Jeremy Sochan’s monstrous posterization of Domantas Sabonis against the Kings back in November, which caused Dan Weiss to dub him “Sochan the Destroyer”.

It all started with a beautiful spin move on De’Aaron Fox out on the perimeter before his face meets Sabonis’ hands for the foul, and while the ball technically leaves Sochan’s hands before it gets to the rim, he somehow still manages to guide it through. The Spurs’ bench reaction was classic, and the Kings’ bench was even more hilarious, particularly fellow rookie Keon Ellis.

You can watch all top 100 dunks below, with Sochan coming in at the 34:43 mark. The Spurs were on the victim side of a few others, but odds are every team was on the wrong side of at least one.

The Spurs were often labeled as boring before the Beautiful Game came along, and even then they weren’t known for producing many highlight reel dunks. At lot of that changed this year with the introduction Sochan (among others), and he also added someone who could complete alley-oops, something the Spurs oddly lacked before.

Sochan missed the final nine games of the season and 14 of the final 18 with a sore knee, but the Spurs have said it’s nothing that will require surgery, just time and rest to heal, and he’ll be back at full strength heading into next season. He gave fans all kinds of visions of the future, so it was bummer that this last season go cut short.