by Shea Serrano
91 PERCENT DISRESPECTFUL:
Tracy McGrady on Shawn Bradley (April 25, 2005)
So many excellent pieces to this one: (1) It was a playoff game. (2) It was a playoff game between the Rockets and the Mavericks, and the Rockets and Mavericks hate each other. (3) The Rockets were on the road and had already stolen Game 1 and were looking to steal Game 2. (4) To that point in his career, Tracy McGrady, for all his otherworldly talents, had never made it out of the first round of the playoffs.7
(5) The actual dunk itself was just this devastating, crippling felony. T-Mac had the ball in the corner, and he was being guarded by Dirk (which really meant that he wasn’t being guarded by anyone), so he just dribbled right around him. When he did so, he saw that Bradley, a 7'6" tall tree branch, had slid over to try to protect the rim, and if you watch the play in slow motion it looks like when McGrady saw it he actually got mad that Bradley had done it, because he just fucking accelerated straight at him. He jumped, and Bradley, knowing there was nothing left to do except accept his fate, turned his back and waited to get dunked to dust.
(6) McGrady was so high up that when he let go of the rim he literally slid down Shawn Bradley’s back, which, I mean, if we’re being technical here, I think that means he turned Bradley into a playground slide.
(7) Kevin Harlan, the primary announcer for the game, shouted, “OH! HE JUST SUCKED THE GRAVITY RIGHT OUT OF THE BUILDING!” (8) The crowd—and remember, the game was in Dallas—the crowd screamed in delight like it was one of their guys who’d just had that great dunk. (9) The play happened on the Rockets side of the floor, and so in the background of the play you could see one of the Rockets bench guys, Jon Barry, roll out onto the floor in shock. (10) And the refs called a foul on the dunk.
92 PERCENT DISRESPECTFUL:
Blake Griffin on Kendrick Perkins (January 30, 2012)
When you’re the defender in one of these dunk situations, there are five ways to handle it. You can do the thing where you just go ahead and step right on out the way on some “Live to fight another day” shit (the coward’s way out, as it were). You can try and take a charge (the dumbest way to go about it). You can stand there and put your arms straight up and just hope something good happens (shoutout Roy Hibbert). You can jump and try desperately to actually block the dunk (the bravest way to go about it). Or you can just foul the hell out of the dunker, hoping, if nothing else, to at least preserve your own integrity.8
Kendrick Perkins chose for the fouling option when Blake Griffin started his dunk, only except the bad thing for him was that Blake, who, by then had gotten the taste of dunk blood, was just too big, too strong, too forceful, too mean to be stopped. He jumped, Kendrick put both arms into Blake’s chest, clobbering him, hoping to stop him (or at least stun him enough to cause him to miss), and Blake just went through him, dropping a nuclear bomb onto Kendrick’s whole everything.
1. I have no idea why Jamaal Magloire, a 6'11" iceberg, is running a fast break in this pretend scenario.
2. This methodology was a thing I came up with for a recurring column about Disrespectful Dunks I wrote for The Ringer during the 2017 NBA season.
3. One possible backstory: In 1994, Chris Dudley started an organization called the Chris Dudley Foundation, which aimed to help children with diabetes. Perhaps Shaq is secretly pro-diabetes? Maybe he dunked it on Dudley and shouted something like, “Bang! That’s a sugary thunder-dunk for them little diabetic ass kids of yours.” It seems unlikely, but I wanted to toss the possibility out there.
4. Chris Dudley is one of only six players in NBA history with a minimum of 1,500 free throw attempts with a worse free throw percentage (45.8) than Shaq (52.7).
5. As I write this, Mutombo is still the only player in NBA history to lead the league in blocks for five straight seasons.
6. The dunk was heavy. Stephon Marbury passed the ball to Amar’e following a very soft pick and roll. Stoudemire, who dunked with exceptional speed, caught the ball in the lane, rose up, then Rose Up, then ROSE UP, and then fucking shoved Olowokandi into an ocean trench. And as good as the dunk was, the best part was Stephon Marbury, who made a face like what it would look like if some-one’s face was melting off of their skull.
7. In 2003, McGrady led his Magic to a 3–1 lead in their playoff series against the Pistons. In an interview after Game 4, Tracy expressed gratitude and thankfulness for being able to get his team to the second round of the playoffs so early in his career, which he assumed they’d do since they had what looked like an impossible-to-lose lead. They lost the next three games. Pistons won the series 4–3.
8. The most famous recent example of this was Draymond Green doing it to LeBron James at the end of Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals when LeBron tried to create his own personal San Andreas in Oakland.
WHICH DUNKS ARE IN THE DISRESPECTFUL DUNK HALL OF FAME?
PART 2
93 PERCENT DISRESPECTFUL:
John Starks on the Bulls (May 25, 1993)
Let me say three things here, none of which are specifically about the actual dunk: (1) I love the John Starks origin story. He played at three different junior colleges, went undrafted, played sparingly for the Warriors in 1989, played in the Continental Basketball Association and the World Basketball League,1 then worked stocking groceries while trying to land on a team. He was at a Knicks camp (and about to be cut) when, during the final practice, he tried to dunk on Patrick Ewing. He ended up twisting his knee (Ewing blocked the dunk), so the Knicks couldn’t cut him until he healed up.2 But right around the time he was healing up, another Knicks player, Trent Tucker, got hurt, so the Knicks kept him on, and he just never went away after that. (2) This dunk for sure was instantly iconic and will remain that way, but its most lasting impact was that the defense that led to it would eventually change basketball hugely. “That was the first time . . . that I had ever seen in the NBA any team force the ball to the baseline in the side pick-and-roll,” Jeff Van Gundy, then an assistant coach with the Knicks, told ESPN in 2012. (3) This was the biggest dunk ever on the Bulls during the Knicks–Bulls rivalry. It actually put the Knicks up 2–0 in their playoff series that year. They went on to lose the next four games. The biggest dunk ever on the Knicks during the Knicks–Bulls rivalry was the one Scottie put down over Patrick3 in 1994 (it’s discussed later). His team won that game, but then eventually lost the series, same as what happened here with the Starks dunk for the Knicks. The universe is weird.
94 PERCENT DISRESPECTFUL:
Darryl Dawkins on backboards (November/December 1979)4
(If you want to swap him out here for the times that Shaq yanked down basketball stanchions, then that’s fine.)
95 PERCENT DISRESPECTFUL:
LeBron James on Jason Terry (March 18, 2013)
A perfect revenge dunk.
LeBron and his Heat faced Terry and his Mavs in the 2011 Finals. After going down 1–2 in the series, Terry, a master needler, started talking to the media about how LeBron, the best player of his generation and one of the five best players of all time, wasn’t going to be able to guard him well for a full series. And then somehow, improbably, unbelievably, unfathomably, it became true. Terry outplayed LeBron in Games 4, 5, and 6 (including a three over LeBron in the final seconds of Game 5 that basically won the game for the Mavs), and the Mavs ended up stealing the title.
But so two years later—and, mind you, this is two years later of Jason Terry bringing that up every chance he got—Terry was on the Celtics and they were playing the Heat, who, by then, were not only the defending champions, but also on a 22-game winning streak. He was bringing the ball up the court and Dwyane Wade snuck in from behind and poked it away. Wade flipped it to Mario Chalmers, who then tossed it to Norris Cole, who then lobbed it up for LeBron, who was all of a sudden heading toward Terry like that comet in Deep Impact. Terry, oh man, he kept jumping around trying to knock the ball away from someone, anyone, but he just couldn’t. He jumped for it when Norris threw it to LeBron, but it was too hi
gh, and so LeBron caught it, D-U-N-K-E-D it, then, before coming down, reached inside Terry’s body, yanked out his spine and skull on some Sub-Zero shit, and then D-U-N-K-E-D that, too. Terry’s body fell backwards, slapping against the court. LeBron stared at him long enough to prove his point (and get a technical), then walked away without saying a word.
Afterward, he told the media scrum, “I’m glad it happened to him.” <3
96 PERCENT DISRESPECTFUL:
Dominique Wilkins on Larry Bird (October 30, 1982)5
Really, the only thing you need to know here is that it was Larry Bird trying to stop Dominique Wilkins on a fast break, and asking someone to try and stop Dominique Wilkins on a fast break in the ’80s was like dropping an army infantry tank out of an airplane from 20,000 feet up and then asking someone on the ground to catch it. The dunk literally ended with Bird, who’d gotten spun all 360 degrees around in the air after he’d collided with Wilkins,6 sitting on the floor just staring straight ahead refusing to move.7 He looked like he’d just survived a car crash, which, I suppose in a way he did.
97 PERCENT DISRESPECTFUL:
Ricky Davis on Steve Nash (November 13, 2002)
Shawn Bradley tried to throw a pass to Dirk Nowitzki.8 Ricky stole it, then shot up the court in his most turbo mode. Steve Nash, may God have mercy on his soul, tried to stop Ricky from scoring by stepping in front of him to take a charge; he’d have done better stepping in front of a train, really. Ricky planted his left foot down just inside the paint, jumped, somehow ended up with his knee on Nash’s shoulder, and then Stone Cold Steve Austin’d a dunk down from 45 feet up in the air. Even Ricky was surprised by what Ricky had just done, which was very crazy because Ricky had a very high opinion of himself.9 The ref called a foul on Nash,10 Ricky just stood there under the rim screaming, “OH SHIT! OH SHIT,” one of his teammates shoved him, then Ricky celebrated for a few more seconds afterward because Ricky always celebrated for a few more seconds afterward.11 Imagine the scene from Game of Thrones where The Mountain squishes The Red Viper’s eyeballs into his head. That was this.
98 PERCENT DISRESPECTFUL:
Dr. J on Michael Cooper (January 5, 1983)
This is that dunk they always show on all the important NBA highlight reels where Dr. J and Cooper are heading full speed toward the rim and Dr. J swings the ball around from what feels like his feet to his forehead and then slams it home as Cooper curls up in the air like how spiders do when they die. It’s the only dunk in the Disrespectful Dunk Hall of Fame that is more distinguished than it is ferocious, which is probably everything you need to know about Dr. J and his entire aesthetic.12
99 PERCENT DISRESPECTFUL:
Shawn Kemp on Alton Lister (April 30, 1992)13
There’s just so much great stuff here to unpack. First, it was Game 4 of their first-round series in the 1992 playoffs, and the young and surprising Sonics, led by the human sneer Gary Payton and the human hightop fade Shawn Kemp, were up 2–1 on the higher-seeded Warriors (it was a 3–6 matchup) and looking to close them out. Second, Game 3 of that series featured an already disrespectful Gary-Payton-to-Shawn-Kemp alley-oop, and so you have to include that in here. Third, and this is maybe the second-best part, Kemp and Lister got into a fight during Game 2, so it was very clear and obvious that they didn’t like each other. Fourth, you have Kemp’s actual dunk, which was incredible all on its own. And then fifth, the part that tied everything together, you have Kemp’s post-dunk celebration, hands down the best post-dunk celebration of all time and the first best part of this whole thing.
To recap the actual play and histrionics: Sonics guard Ricky Pierce dribbled his way into a trap on the left side of the court. He turned and tossed the ball out to Kemp, who caught it at the top of the key. Kemp realized the lane was wide open, took a dribble in, gathered the ball and held it in his arm like a running back does the football when he’s in the opening field, and then began his jump. And just as he began his jump, Lister slid over and tried to take a charge.
Now, I don’t mind telling you: Shawn Kemp was a bad motherfucker.14 He remains, in no uncertain terms, one of the all-time great in-game dunkers. I was reading things about him and also about his dunks while I was researching for this book and the best description I came across for his dunks was when Dan Devine, writing for Yahoo! Sports, referred to it as “a doomsday device,” which is exactly what it was. It was just this very ferocious, very violent, very terrifying act, and on this particular day, Alton Lister caught the ultimate worst of it.
He slid in and tried to take that charge, which I guess was noble, but it was too late; Lister caught a knee in the sternum, somehow propelling Kemp even higher into the air, and so there Lister was, falling backwards onto the ground, sliding some several feet across the court as Kemp tried to tomahawk dunk the Warriors out of the NBA.15 The whole arena—they were playing in Seattle—the whole arena just went haywire. It was total madness. And Kemp, in the moment that would go on to be the signature play of his career, after the dunk, he landed, squatted down a little to get closer to Lister’s eye level, and when he caught Lister’s eyes, he pointed at him with both index fingers in a very “Haha, you just died” way.16 Imagine that. Imagine hitting someone with a truck, jumping out, then pointing at them and laughing. That’s basically what Kemp did. It was poetry. It was excellent. It was excellence.
100 PERCENT DISRESPECTFUL:
Scottie Pippen on Patrick Ewing (May 20, 1994)
The most disrespectful dunk of all time. Let’s go through each of the six categories mentioned in the first part of this double chapter to make sure we don’t miss anything.
• CATEGORY 1: HOW DIFFICULT AND/OR IMPRESSIVE WAS THE ACTUAL DUNK? Insanely difficult and impressive. You’re talking about a full-speed, fast-breaking, taking-off-from-just-inside-the-lane, one-on-one-versus-Patrick-Ewing dunk. And let’s add to it that, not only was it the playoffs, but it was the playoffs and the Bulls were down 3–2 in that series, meaning if they lost it was over, meaning that it happened under incredibly high stakes. 20/20.
• CATEGORY 2: WHAT DID THE DUNKER DO IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE DUNK? Oh God. Ewing, who’d tried so hard to block the dunk that he’d compromised his balance entirely, fell backwards to the floor. He grasped at Scottie to keep himself up, but Scottie just shoved his arms away, making it look like he’d shoved Ewing to the floor. What’s more, Scottie’s momentum carried him forward several steps after the dunk, and so he was literally standing over Ewing, his dick just two feet from Ewing’s face, which, same as we saw with the Shaq–Dudley dunk, is just always extra points for the guy who’s the dicker and bad business for the guy who’s the dickee. Pippen wasn’t even done there, though. He walked over Ewing, then strolled past Spike Lee, who’d gotten courtside seats to the game and was standing up screaming and yelling, and told him, “Sit your ass down.” Then he smiled and did a fist pump and walked away from the carnage like what the Joker did in The Dark Knight after he blew up that hospital. 20/20.
• CATEGORY 3: HOW HARD DID THE DEFENDER TRY TO STOP THE DUNK FROM HAPPENING? So hard. As hard as anybody could ever possibly try to block a dunk without actually blocking a dunk. Give Ewing his due here: He had no fear about him during that play. 20/20.
• CATEGORY 4: IS THERE A BACKSTORY BETWEEN THE DUNKER AND THE DUNKEE?
The Knicks lost to the Bulls in the playoffs in 1989.
The Knicks lost to the Bulls in the playoffs in 1991.
The Knicks lost to the Bulls in the playoffs in 1992.
The Knicks lost to the Bulls in the playoffs in 1993.17
Yes. There’s a backstory. 15/15.
• CATEGORY 5: DID THE BALL GO STRAIGHT THROUGH THE NET OR DID IT RATTLE AROUND A LITTLE? Perfect. 5/5.
• CATEGORY 6: HOW DID EVERYONE WHO WAS NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED WITH THE DUNK REACT? In the best way possible. The announcers went bonkers. (“OH MY!” “OH BABY!” “HOLY COW!”) The crowd went bonkers. Pete Myers, a shooting guard for the Bulls, leaned over Ewing and barked so
mething at him. Several Knicks players ran over and started shoving people. Several Bulls players ran over and shoved people back. The refs ran in and tried to get control of everything. It was chaos. It was beautiful, gory, disrespectful chaos. Scottie Pippen dunked almost 20,000 people into a feeding frenzy. It was all just so perfectly disrespectful. 20/20.
1. I have no idea what leagues these are. Had I not read about them in the New York Times, I’d have believed they were fake.
2. Teams can’t cut injured players.
3. There is absolutely an argument to be made here that Michael’s dunk over Ewing was the biggest.
4. Darryl shattered two different backboards in two different NBA games less than a month apart. The first one happened during a road game against Kansas City. He said he broke the second one, which happened during a home game, because he wanted to do it in Philadelphia so his fans could see it.
5. Only the second game of ’Nique’s career.
6. “I think that dunk I was just mad because I’d just got burnt three or four times by Larry. And that was probably just a dunk out of anger.” —Dominique Wilkins, on TNT’s show NBA Posterized! in 2007.
7. This was an and-one dunk, too. That should be mentioned.
8. This is the whitest, tallest sentence in the entire book.
9. Ricky was actually in Cleveland when LeBron first showed up. He lasted just a couple of months before he was traded. He told newspapers afterward: “I thought LeBron James was just going to be another addition to help me score.”