Robert Parish of the Boston Celtics goes up for a slam dunk against the New York Knicks in 1991. Photograph: Nathaniel S Butler/NBAE/Getty Images
You can still see the moment online, 42 years later: The Philadelphia 76ers’ Julius Erving pulling off his January 1983 “rock the cradle” dunk against the Los Angeles Lakers. Yes, Dr. J cradles the ball in his arm as he goes airborne and slams it home over the Lakers’ Michael Cooper.
“It’s the greatest dunk of all time,” says Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist Mike Sielski.
Sielski has the authority to say so. He is the author of a recently published book, Magic in the Air: The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk.
Within its pages, you can relive those long-ago highlights from Dr J. The same goes for the epic 1988 NBA Slam Dunk Contest battle between Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins. There’s an unforgettable moment from college basketball: Lorenzo Charles dunking to win the 1983 NCAA championship for NC State over Houston and its Phi Slama Jama roster. There are bittersweet moments as well: Gravity-defying stars who, for various reasons, fizzled in the pros (David Thompson) or never made it there at all (“Jumpin’” Jackie Jackson and Earl “The Goat” Manigault).
The book delves into the origins of dunking and the perhaps unanswerable question of who was the first to dunk. The pioneers include Jack Inglis – who reportedly hung on to the cage surrounding a court and threw the ball into the net – and Bernard Dobbas, who was powerful off the court too: He reportedly slew a mountain lion with his bare hands. There was also the 1936 US Olympian Joe Fortenberry, who hailed from the unconventionally named town of Happy, Texas.
The narrative explores dunking’s subsequent appeal to Black players during the civil rights era, when its top practitioners included Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and a UCLA standout named Lew Alcindor. After a sensational sophomore season from the future Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the dunk was controversially and mysteriously banned from high school and college play for nearly a decade.
What brought the dunk…
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