It Was Totally Not Brendan Haywood's Fault That Kevin Durant Posterized Him, Says Brendan Haywood

Remember this dunk? Of course you do. It was awesome. Brendan Haywood, whose greatest skill has traditionally been being marginally better than Erick Dampier or Etan Thomas, remembers it too.

ESPNDallas has Haywood's explanation, in which he loosely compares himself to Mutombo, Ewing, and Olajuwon:

But you look at history — [Dikembe] Mutombo, banged on all the time; Patrick [Ewing], everybody remembers Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen dunks; Kevin Johnson on Hakeem Olajuwon. If you're a big in this league, you're going to get dunked on. And you've got a 6-foot-10 perimeter player who jumps out the gym. They don't make those too much.

"It was a great play, but I'm not even really worried about that. I'm more worried about how bad our perimeter defense was. I'm like, 'Peja, uh, can you close the gate a little bit maybe?' [...] "Man, everybody is going to remember the dunk, but it's more about how we lined up all night and got beat on basically one dribble.

Yes, this tends to happen when the average starter on the team is over 30 and moves about as well laterally as Derek Jeter. Alas. Team Haywood?

Brendan Haywood calls out Mavs' D [ESPN Dallas]