Believe it or not, there used to be a time when dunks were perfunctory. If you look back at old clips of Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, they just put the ball over the rim and in the basket. Keep in mind that Chamberlain used to dunk his free throws: he would take off from the foul line and dunk, which worked out great for the Big Dipper, as he was a dreadful free throw shooter (the NCAA and NBA eventually banned the practice).
Dunking began to change when Julius Erving turned pro and began to do
things in the ABA that no one had seen before and only a handful of fans got to witness in person since the ABA, fatally, never had a TV deal.
But dunking became an act of imagination and when Darryl Dawkins joined the Philadelphia 76ers in 1975, the first player to come to the league directly out of high school, he brought an infectious enthusiasm to the art of dunking.
He had names for many of his dunks including the following: the Rim Wrecker, the Go-Rilla, the Look Out Below, the In-Your-Face Disgrace, the Cover Your Head, the Yo-Mama, the Spine-Chiller Supreme, and the Greyhound Special.
He is also the answer to an interesting trivia question: why does the NBA have breakaway rims?
It’s because of Dawkins, who broke two rims in short order in 1979. The league announced fines for breaking a backboard not long after that.
Dawkins was a breath of fresh air in a staid league, sort of Shaq before Shaq.
Sadly, he died in 2015 at the age of 58 of a heart attack.
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