Mavs waive Yuki Togashi and Eric Griffin, roster now 18

The Dallas Mavericks announced today that they have waived 5'7 Yuki Togashi of Japan and dunking machine Eric Griffin. Yuki Togashi was signed under the pretenses that he would be waived and play for the Mavericks D-league affiliate the Texas Legands in order to further develop him before bringing him into the NBA so this does not come as a surprise. You can read more about it here. Eric Griffin however was signed to a 3 year $150,000 guaranteed contract with the Mavericks and now receives that money for only playing 2 weeks in Preseason. It seemed as if coach Carlyle and the team liked Griffin so hopefully waving him means he too will go to play for the Texas Legands and one day play for the Mavericks. Still I had really hoped to see Eric Griffin in the dunk contest this year but I guess I'll have to wait for that. Griffin and Togashi both starting for the Legends would actually get me to watch some D-league games but until then I guess I'll have to just keep watching this over and over and over again. 

NBA 2015 Dunk Contest Predictions

Last season the NBA rolled out a new format for the dunk contest that pitted the 3 Eastern Conference players against the 3 Western Conference players. These east vs west competitions started with a freestyle round where each conference had 90 seconds to throw down as many impressive dunks as possible. The winning team was then allowed to choose the dunking order for the battle round. In the battle round 1 player from each conference faced off in traditional dunk contest fashion with the loser being eliminated from the competition. Surprisingly though the east won each of their first battle round match ups leading to a situation where the dunk contest was as short as possible. Granted nobody expected the east to dominate the battle round and the thought of one player from the west having to then win two more battle rounds against the east can lead to a really exciting narrative where one player carried their entire conference proving across 3 rounds that he is better than the 3 best dunkers the other conference could throw at him. I hope they give this format one more shot because in theory this format can be really exciting, it just had it's least interesting scenario play out last year.

East:

1. John Wall (Washington Wizards)

2. Terrence Ross (Toronto Raptors)

3. Andre Drummond (Detroit Pistons)

West:

1. Andrew Wiggins (Minnesota Timberwolves)

2. Eric Griffin (Dallas Mavericks)

3. Kenneth Faried (Denver Nuggets)