Noa Eseengue was a lottery pick in the 2025 NBA Draft with the Chicago Bulls and hopefully has a long and fruitful career ahead of him. Because he was the victim of a Summer League poster dunk that left SportsCenter anchors Nicole Briscoe and Ryan Smith in tears over the meme that he spawned.
Who says there are no highlights from Summer League action? Indiana Pacers guard Johnny Furphy didn’t see much time for the Eastern Conference champions in his rookie season after getting drafted in 2024 following his lone season at Kansas. However, he certainly made an impression with an incredible dunk over Essengue in Monday night’s Summer League matchup against the Bulls.
But it wasn’t the poster dunk that derailed SportsCenter and sent Briscoe and Smith into a laughing fit, it was the unfortunate picture of Essengue’s face as Furphy was dunking over him that left the anchor duo completely unable to contain their reaction.
It is indeed real as Smith shared the Pacers post on social media.
Your heart goes out to Noa Essengue on that one. For as many great NBA poster dunks as we have seen over the years, we’ve never seen one quite like that where the player getting dunked on becomes immediately worthy of a meme.
As far as the SportsCenter side of things go, it’s good to see anchors not afraid to laugh and share their honest reaction to something. We haven’t seen a moment like that since the good old days when Charley Steiner presented Carl Lewis attempting to sing the national anthem.