When you think of dunk contests, there are several years which come to mind. 1985, when MJ and ‘Nique battled it out. Or 2000, when Vince Carter turned it into a one-man show. Or 1998, when things got crazy in St. Louis.
What’s that? You don’t know about 1998? Aw, son. Let me tell you what went down in St. Lizzy.
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In 1998, I was playing for a school with a funny name. It was Christian High School, located in the suburbs of St. Louis. It was a new high school, one that had apparently been named during a fit of minimalist zeal. 1998 was a banner year, for CHS was churning out its first graduating class, sending a brigade of precisely four seniors out to meet the world.
In a school so small, it was difficult to field many sports teams. Basketball was more or less the school’s calling card. CHS had not yet built its gym, so all of the home games had to be played at the local public school, or Public High School, if you will. Our boys team that year was remarkably average, in that I can’t even recall what our record was. I was the team’s center, a 6-7 tornado of elbows and knees that tipped the scales at a hearty 170 pounds. I fancied myself the gravest of defensive threats. This was not completely without merit: In our small classification, it was common to play against schools that had no tall players. I thus collected a great deal of blocked shots when 5-11 post players would pivot and fling the ball directly into my armpit.
The one area where I was genetically gifted was jumping. I had springy, effortless hops that allowed me to dunk the ball easily with either hand. During practice I would wow my earthbound teammates with reverse jams, and my patented “360,” which was actually a 270 with the final 90 being spastic flailing. Of course, at no point did I ever replicate these feats during games. I almost never dunked during games, for I was a teenage ninny who seized with fear whenever the ball landed in my hands.
At the end of the season we had a faculty game, where our team scrimmaged against a squad comprised of fathers and teachers. It was a lighthearted affair, an end of year celebration. This year, however, someone had decided that it would be a good idea to hold a dunk contest…the first such competition in school history.
Lost in the planning was the small issue of who would could compete. There were only one and a half people in the entire school who could dunk a basketball. I had been quickly informed by the athletic director that I would be participating, whether I wanted to or not. The other “half” was a boy named John who could throw down about half the dunks he attempted. John was a large blond-haired preacher’s kid whose high school career consisted of lumbering from one pile of trouble to the next. He was also occasionally on the basketball team, whenever his various suspensions would permit.
To make up for this utter lack of talent, the school hatched a plan to bring in a mystery competitor. Almost immediately the secret was leaked: The plan was that the cheerleaders would form a human tower under the goal and then the girl on top would “dunk” a basketball. Pretty exciting, huh?
The day of the faculty game arrived. Family members and fellow students lined the bleachers on one side of the gym. Before the scrimmage began, John and I were called out to halfcourt, signaling the start of the dunk contest.
There was one more contestant, a surprise to everyone, especially him. He had apparently been pulled out of the stands moments before the introductions. He was the adult son of one of the teachers, about 25 and of average height. We had never met him before, but he had a goatee and an earring, which definitely seemed like it would count for something.
“Can you dunk?” I asked him as he walked over to where John and I stood.
He shrugged.
“Kind of,” he said simply.
The rules of the contest were read over the PA. Each contestant got two attempts. There would be no do-overs. The hundred or so spectators included all nine or ten of the girls from school who you would hope to impress. Simply put, the stakes were staggering.
The cheerleaders were up first. They were introduced over the speakers, much to the crowd’s delight. They huddled in the lane and built a swaying, buckling tower of adolescence next to the hoop. Someone tossed the girl on top a basketball, the act of which nearly caused the entire structure to collapse. The tiny girl carefully lifted the ball over the rim and dropped it through. The crowd found this to be amazing and cheered wildly.
The cheerleaders did not require a second attempt, so it was time for the regular competitors. First up was Goatee. He took one of the basketballs and spun it in his hands like he knew what he was doing. Carefully measuring his distance, he tossed the ball high into the air and waited for it to fall. When the ball bounced off the floor he went after it. He caught the ball cleanly but could not get it high enough to punch it through the rim. He landed to a disappointed exhale from the bleachers. The stranger smirked, picked up the ball and trotted back out to his starting point. He paused, recalculating. After a moment he tried the same thing again: lobbing the ball up and trying to catch it off the bounce. His second attempt was less accurate than the first. The ball sailed over the rim, and Goatee was 0-for-2.
John was next. He grabbed a loose basketball and backed up like a Brahma bull until he was at midcourt. In the days leading up to the contest, John had loudly proclaimed that he would unleash all manner of Shaolin acrobatics to take top honors. Now that the moment was his, he glared at the basket and snorted. John broke into a sprint, ball in hand, rumbling right down the lane. He exploded up at the rim and brought the ball behind his head with both hands. The ball met the front of the rim with a dull thud and John fell like a bag of potatoes. Undaunted, he collected the ball and raced back to midcourt. Eschewing any form of planning, John immediately took off running, galloping back to the goal like a vanilla ape. He jumped from the middle of the paint and tried once again to jackhammer the ball with both hands. Once more, though, the ball hit the front of the rim and that was that. John finished 0-for-2 as well.
As the smattering of polite applause tickled the corners of the gymnasium, it suddenly hit me that I was alone at midcourt. It was my turn. Someone rolled me a ball and the eyes of the bleachers fell on me. As the butterflies within me grew and grew, I wandered aimlessly around the three-point line, back and forth, looking for heaven knows what. Finally I settled on the right hand side. I patted the ball a couple of times and pushed it out in front of me. I took one dribble and stopped directly in front of the rim. Nervous energy shot through my legs and I flew up to attempt the easiest one-handed dunk you could ever imagine. I poked the ball through with one hand and then had to hang in the air while my inertia got its money’s worth. I probably could have pulled the ball out of the net and re-dunked it before gravity remembered me.
The crowd reacted uproariously, whooping and hollering over the successful dunk. Perhaps spurred on by this support, the smallest of confidences began brewing inside me. I looked at the bleachers, at the pretty girls clapping, and an idea made its way into my brain. I backed up to the three-point line, ready for my second attempt. I think it’s time, I thought to myself. It’s time to drop my 360 on these suckers. I leaned forward, ran, stutter stepped, and gathered myself for takeoff. I jumped from the same place I had jumped from a hundred times before during practices.
Funny how time slows down when you’re in the air. About halfway into my 270, the wheels of poise came off. I thought of the crowd, of the pretty girls and of a hundred reasons why this was not a good time to do the 360. I figured I could just adjust things mid-air, all smooth-like, and make it a simple 180 reverse. Yeah, that was a good idea. Everybody likes a 180.
The ball clanged off the back iron. I landed on my feet to face a sad sigh from the bleachers.
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I guess you could say the inaugural Christian High dunk contest was kind of a defensive struggle. Not counting the cheerleader tower, the contestants went 1-for-6 on their attempts. My prize for winning the competition? A t-shirt that read, “JESUS IS LIFE, THE REST IS JUST BASKETBALL.”
When I got home that night, I cut the sleeves off of the shirt. This seemed like a reasonable thing to do, since most of the NBA players I saw on TV liked to wear sleeveless shirts. And now that I was a slam dunk champion, I was basically just like them.
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