Researchers announce standarized slam dunk measure

What would this dunk have been scored using the incremental dunk grade index? Only Hugh knows. ScoringLive photo illustration

Researchers from Boulsauhaw Polytechnic Institute have released what is expected to be adopted as a way to standardized measure of slam dunks that will effectively do away with the old school practice of holding up pieces of paper with the numbers one through ten on them.

"Its quite a breakthrough from a mathematic perspective," said head scientist Dee Zoll. "And now with this equation available to the general public, as they say, ball don't lie."

The system of measuring each trip above the rim for two, the incremental dunk grade index (IDGI), takes in account a number of factors to determine quality, efficiency, advocacy, and entropy of each instance, including but not limited to: amplitude, ball velocity, centrifugal arc path, and post-impact rim vibration.

The algorithm, once applied, produces the same numerical representation of the slamma-jamma fans are used to.

"We wanted to keep the (one-to-ten) scale the same," Zoll remarked. "It wouldn't make sense if we made the scale A to Z and have people ask, (for example) so if I get a G dunk, is that like a 6?"

Could you expect to see IDGI implemented in the near future at a preseason tournament dunk exhibition near you? Only time will tell.

"At the end of the day, our main hope is that players can walk off the court and think to themselves, both teams played hard," said Zoll.

And the response thus far has been more than promising.

"At first I was like really, IDGI?" commented Evana Sato, a seventh year student at BPI. "But once I read the instruction manual, it like totally made a lot more sense."

So while the future leaders of tomorrow may not be graduating anytime soon, a better way for scoring the "dunk-you-very-much" is here to stay.