by Shea Serrano
• NO FICTIONAL CHARACTERS ARE ALLOWED. Let’s keep this at least a tiny bit based in reality. Your pick has to be someone real. You want to dunk on Ishmael from Moby-Dick? Sorry, he’s out. Coach Eric Taylor from Friday Night Lights? He’s out, too. Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs? Nope, sorry.2 (This one hurts. She’d be a top tier pick were this rule not in place.) Has to be an actual, real person.
So those are the four rules for this particular exercise. As long as your pick meets those requirements, he or she is eligible to get dunked on in your Dream Dunk.
When I was growing up, my friends and I would play basketball at an elementary school near my house in San Antonio. There were other courts that were closer (it was about a mile walk to get to the school), and there were other courts that were more accessible (there was a tall chain-link fence that wrapped around the perimeter of the whole school that was supposed to keep people out), and there were certainly courts that posed fewer risks for playing at them (the police would show up to run us off every so often). But none of that mattered, because none of the other courts in the area offered what that particular one could: 8-foot rims.3
I have a very real jealousy in my bones for anyone who’s able to dunk on a regulation-size rim. I’ve never done so, and I never will be able to do so. I have accepted this as fact, hard as it may be. Imagine that. Imagine being born loving a thing only to grow up and realize that your body is the opposite of what’s required to excel at the thing. Imagine a catfish wanting to ride a motorcycle, or a horse wanting to rock climb.4 That was me, or is me, rather. That’s my conundrum. I love basketball, a sport where size and strength are coveted, and yet every morning I wake up and look in the mirror and remember that I am not that. But so that’s why I remember those days of trespassing onto that school’s court and playing basketball there so fondly. For those hours we were there, the unreachable parts of the game were made accessible.
The first time I dunked on someone there was an exhilarating feeling. We were playing 3-on-3 and someone had driven into the lane and then passed it out to me. The guy guarding me was caught off guard by the pass, and so I was able to gain a step on him as he spun around to try and stay close to me. I jumped and he jumped, too, but he was just enough out of position that I knew he wasn’t going to be able to block me. So I cocked the ball back, then rammed it through the rim as hard as I could, Zeus claiming his position as ruler of the gods. I let out a yell, slapped my own chest, then collected my high-fives from my teammates.
The best part, though: Turned out, when I’d dunked the ball, it’d hit the back part of the rim as it was going through, causing it to ricochet downward right the fuck into the guy’s face who’d tried to block the dunk. So not only had I dunked my first dunk, but I’d dunked it with such ferocity that the guy who was defending me started bleeding. Dunking it so hard that your opponent starts to bleed is just about the most impressive nonsexual thing a 14-year-old boy can do. It was great. I never forgot that day, or that feeling, or that blood.
Some questions to ask yourself when considering who to choose as your dunkee for your Dream Dunk:
“DO I WANT A DUNK THAT’S INTERESTING AS ITS OWN THING?”
A dunk story can be interesting for three different reasons, the first of which being the dunk itself. The story I just told earlier about the guy getting hit in the face with the ball—that’s an example of this. Dunks are cool enough things that they can stand as their own story arcs if they need to. Dunks featuring feats of unusual athleticism typically fall into this category. They get specific names that live on in history as their own things. Dr. J’s Rock the Baby cradle dunk, for example. Or MJ’s Free Throw Line dunk. Or the Shea Serrano Bloody Nose dunk.5 Things like that.
“DO I WANT A DUNK THAT’S INTERESTING BECAUSE I HAVE SOME SORT OF RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PERSON GETTING DUNKED ON?”
The second way a dunk story can be interesting is because of the intimate nature of the dunk: with this version what I mean is you dunk on someone that you have a personal relationship with, so that’s why it’s interesting. (“Oh fuck, you dunked on your grandma!?” “Oh fuck, you dunked on your principal!?”) These dunks mostly exist to serve as a self actualization-type thing. You do a dunk like this because you want to carry it around in your chest, not necessarily because you want to tell other people about it. Your dad walked out on your family when you were four. You happen across him at the park when you’re 19. You drop a two-handed hammer on him in the lane then burst into tears about it later when you’re in your room in private. That’s this dunk.
“DO I WANT A DUNK THAT’S INTERESTING BECAUSE OF HOW FAMOUS THE PERSON ON THE OTHER END OF THE DUNK IS?”
The third way a dunk story is interesting is because of the big-name recognition involved in the dunk. This kind of dunk is the story you tell at the cocktail party and everyone wants to hear about it because everyone knows the person you dunked on. Picture you walk into a room and then someone grabs you around the shoulder and then shouts across the room, “Aye, Steve! Steve! This is the guy I was telling you about! . . . What? . . . Yeah! This is him! The guy who dunked on Beyoncé!” That’s this.
“COULD THIS DUNK POSSIBLY AFFECT THE COURSE OF HISTORY IN A PROFOUND WAY?”
Maybe there’s a chance World War I never happens if you dunk on Archduke Franz Ferdinand, you know what I’m saying. Or maybe you dunk on John Wilkes Booth and he never gets around to assassinating Abraham Lincoln. Ooh, or maybe you go straight to the source and dunk on Abraham Lincoln6 instead. Who knows how that plays out? Maybe it inspires him to be an even better president.
Oh shit. Or maybe it crushes him? What if he never even gets elected president because he’s never able to outrun the shame that comes along with getting posterized?7 You dunk on Honest Abe and then hop back in your time machine to head home thinking everything is great and then you get back to today and find out that slavery is still around because you dunked Lincoln right the fuck out of the White House.
“COULD THIS DUNK POSSIBLY AFFECT THE COURSE OF HISTORY IN A POSITIVE WAY?”
I feel like maybe if you went back in time and dunked on Marie Curie she’d have been so driven to get a revenge dunk in on you that she’d have spent a little more time outside getting some fresh air and away from all that radioactive matter. You could save Marie Curie’s life with a tomahawk dunk. That’s real heroism.8
I’m not sure who to pick for my Dream Dunk. There are so many options. I wouldn’t mind dunking on 1999 Brad Pitt. The only thing I’d worry about there is my boner catching him in the eye on my way up because he was so beautiful. Ernest Hemingway seems like a good pick. (For sale: basketball shoes, once worn.) Will Smith has been an important part of my pop culture life for a long time so crushing one on him would be especially satisfying. Bruce Willis would be high up the list for me. (“I fucking dunked on John McClane at the gym today.”) It’d be cool to dunk on Mariah Carey or, if they come as a package, all four of the guys in Boyz II Men.
I just realized we’ve gone all this way and zero basketball names have been brought up for contention. You’d do well to go with any of the great shot blockers—Hakeem,9 Dikembe (anybody nicknamed after a mountain is a good choice), Bill Russell, Mark Eaton (he’s listed at 7'4" but I’m fairly confident he’s somewhere closer to 9'6"), Tim Duncan, etc. Ben Wallace always seemed very ferocious so cramming it in against him would be pretty gratifying. Dwight Howard won Defensive Player of the Year from 2009 to 2011 so he’d be a good pick. (Bonus reason: HE’S DWIGHT HOWARD and Dwight Howard has been annoying since, like, 2008).
Maybe James Harden. Maybe Xavier McDaniel. Maybe Bill Laimbeer. Maybe Gregg Popovich. Maybe Aaron Rodgers. Walt Disney. George Washington Carver. One of the Kardashians. All of the Kardashians. Kanye. Tupac.
Channing Tatum? Pre-2002 Ginuwine? Audrey Hepburn? Carmen Electra? Antonio Banderas? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Jean-Claude Van Damme? Selena? Leonardo DiCaprio? Montell Jordan?
Oh snap.
I got
it.
I know who my Dream Dunk is on.
I got it.
It’s perfect.
It’s so perfect.
Are you ready for this?
Okay.
I’m dunking on . . .
. . . wait for it . . .
. . . wait . . .
. . . hold on . . .
. . . here it comes . . .
Martin Luther King Jr.10
I’m dunking on MLK.
That’s my Dream Dunk.
That’s my dream.
1. It’ll happen during a game that you for some reason both ended up playing in.
2. You can, however, dunk on Jodie Foster if you so choose.
3. Better still: There were several courts set up around the edge of the play area. Two of the goals happened to be parallel to one another, which meant that you could play full court on them if you wanted to. This was not their intention, FYI. The two goals just happened to be positioned opposite each other by chance. A proper NBA court is 94 feet long. The distance between the goals at the school was at least 130 feet. There was also a big dip in the middle if you were running from one side to the other. And the pavement had loose rubble on it and also a few divots that could grab ahold of your foot if you stepped in them the right way. It was like playing in Boston Garden, but with fewer white people.
4. I legit had an Animals Wanting To Do Things They Can’t Do list of, like, 15 different things for this part and the catfish on the motorcycle and the horse rock climber were my two favorites. Some of the other ones that ended up getting cut: an elephant that wants to be a skier (he’s too big); a pig that wants to be an archer (his little arms wouldn’t be able to pull the arrow back far enough); a mouse that wants to be a lawyer (mice can’t read); a great white shark that wants to work for the UN (great white sharks are racist).
5. I’m really trying to usher this into the dunk canon.
6. Abraham Lincoln would be the first best president to dunk on. Second would be Obama. Third would be Kennedy. Last would be Roosevelt after he was in the wheelchair.
7. They were especially stodgy in the 1800s. I have to believe that getting dunked on could’ve derailed someone’s entire life back then.
8. Regarding scientists, I wouldn’t mind dunking on Charles Darwin just to make some sort of “survival of the fittest” joke to him afterward. Or maybe Thomas Edison or Isaac Newton because they’re the most recognizable scientist names to people who aren’t scientists. I’ve never been a big fan of the structure of atoms so dunking on Niels Bohr could be fulfilling. I don’t know. It’s a hard decision. There are a lot of dunk-worthy scientists. I know one thing: Louis Pasteur is safe from catching this dunk hammer because I have a lot of respect for his work in pasteurization. Pasteurization makes milk delicious and safe. Shoutout pasteurization.
9. More blocks than anyone else in the history of the league (3,830).
10. Do you think it would be harder to dunk on Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X? I bet there’s no way you get that dunk off on Malcolm X. Malcolm X seems like the type who would for sure hit you with a flagrant foul before he let you dunk on him. “By any means necessary,” he’d shout, as he undercut you on your way up like they did Shep in the championship game in Above the Rim. If you get a dunk off on Malcolm X, you really earned that shit.
WHICH NBA PLAYER’S LEGACY IS THE MOST GREATLY AFFECTED IF WE GIVE HIM THE CHAMPIONSHIP HE NEVER WON?
This is a list of 13 very great NBA players who never won a championship.1 Included with each person’s name is a number. That number represents that player’s placement in ESPN’s All-Time Best NBA Player Rankings conversation:2 Karl Malone (16th), Charles Barkley (18th), John Stockton (19th), Steve Nash (30th), Patrick Ewing (32nd), Dominique Wilkins (44th), Allen Iverson (46th), Reggie Miller (51st), Carmelo Anthony (59th; he’s still playing as I write this but I’m guessing he’s never going to win one3), Shea Serrano4 (62nd5), Tracy McGrady (63rd), Chris Webber (66th), Vince Carter (69th), and Dikembe Mutombo (73rd).
I mention their ranks because we need them for the thing we’re going to figure out here, which is: Pretend we can go back in time. Pretend, while on our way to back in time, we tinker with some of the universe’s inner gears and spin some of its knobs the opposite direction. Pretend that by doing so we change the results of some key playoff games and key playoff series. Pretend that some people we know to have won championships in our lifetimes actually lost those championships, and pretend that some people we know to have lost championships in our lifetimes actually won those championships. If we do that for each of the players mentioned in the above paragraph, if we give each person the championship he missed out on, then whose legacy is the most greatly affected?
Let’s go player by player through those 13, and for each one I’m going to list three things:
1. HIS ALL-TIME BEST NBA PLAYER RANK. I would like to mention here that I don’t necessarily agree with the placement of each player on ESPN’s list.6 (Steph Curry, for example, who is for sure a darling and obviously great, is already listed as the 23rd greatest NBA player of all time, which is preposterous.) We just needed a list to use to keep things in order and theirs seemed solid enough.
2. THE PLAYOFF GAME CHANGES WE’RE RIGGING IN HIS FAVOR. I think a good way to handle this one is, okay, if we have to change a whole bunch of stuff in history to get a player his championship, then that player’s legacy gets pumped up less than someone for whom we only need to change one or two things to get him his title. So think on it like: Patrick Ewing came within one game of winning a championship. (His Knicks lost in Game 7 of the Finals to the Rockets in 1994.) He only needs for us to make some very minor changes to history for him to get a ring. Meanwhile, Tracy McGrady never made it out of the first round of the playoffs while he was a key player on a team.7 We have to rearrange planets to get him his ring. As such, Patrick’s legacy would get a greater bump by him winning a title than McGrady’s would by him winning one. It’s one of those “You have to help me help you” situations.
3. THE POTENTIAL RAMIFICATIONS OF THE CHANGES MADE. In addition to looking at what winning a championship would mean for someone, we have to talk about what happens when we start taking away championships from other players. It’s an equally interesting and important thing because within the mythology of sports, things that don’t happen are often as impactful as things that do happen.
I lied.
Sort of. I’m not going to do a longform version of an answer for each player I listed earlier because it’s already pretty clear which ones are serious contenders for having their legacies impacted the greatest amounts and which ones are not. As such, I’m just going to burn through the five non-contenders here before we get to the eight actual real contenders.
JOHN STOCKTON (19TH): The NBA’s all-time leader in assists and also the all-time leader in steals, so of course he is a force. But he also played his entire career with Karl Malone,8 which, I mean, come on. Let’s say we give the Jazz the 1997 title over the Bulls. Most of the credit and acclaim will go to Malone if that happens, even if Stockton was the whole entire reason they won. His legacy is nearly the same with or without a title. // He gets his ring and he jumps from 19th to 17th, still one spot behind Malone.
REGGIE MILLER (51ST): My heart is telling me that if Reggie wins that 2000 Finals (where his Pacers lost to the Lakers, 4–2), he jumps from 51st all the way to 1st. My brain, however, is telling me that it’s actually probably something like he jumps from 51st to 32nd, and that even despite that big move, it doesn’t do a whole, whole bunch for his legacy beyond enhancing his reputation as a deadly late-game performer, which is already airtight.
CARMELO ANTHONY9 (59TH): The closest Carmelo ever got to winning a title was when his Nuggets made it to Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals in 2009. They lost to the Lakers there, and then the Lakers beat Dwight Howard and the Magic in the Finals. Let’s swap that. The Nuggets beat the Lakers in the Conference Finals and then beat the M
agic in the Finals. Is anyone really excited by that? // He jumps from 59th to 54th.
CHRIS WEBBER (66TH): Love. We get to give Webber and his maniac Kings the 2002 title.10 And since we’re making things up, let’s also go ahead and make up that he dominates in the Finals. Check this out: For his first five seasons in Sacramento (1999–2003), Webber averaged 24.1 points per game, 10.9 rebounds per game, 4.7 assists per game, 1.6 blocks per game, and 1.5 steals per game. That’s such a tough stat line. Let’s say that Webber upped all of those numbers a tick in the Pretend Finals. He gets his ring, he gets to take down the Lakers while doing so, and he gets to wash away the “choker” label that chased him around. All great things for Webber. That said, all his championship likely does is end up legitimizing his cult hero status. // He jumps from 66th to 51st.
DIKEMBE MUTOMBO (73RD): Same as what happened with Stockton, if we give a title to Dikembe—like, say we give him a ring for 2001 when his Sixers made it to the Finals and got smashed by the Lakers—all the credit is going to end up going to Allen Iverson, that team’s supernova. // If Dikembe gets a ring, he jumps from 73rd to 70th.
THE EIGHT CONTENDERS
PLAYER:
Karl Malone
RANKING:
16th
YEAR HE’S WINNING THE CHAMPIONSHIP:
1997 (His Jazz lost to the Bulls in the Finals, 4–2.)
I’m picking this year over giving him the 1998 championship for a couple of reasons.
First, and this is the most important thing here: I don’t want to erase Michael Jordan’s last shot as a Chicago Bull being a swish that wins the Bulls a championship. Sorry.