When I was in high school, my family and I lived in a two-story brick house in Clear Lake City, a suburb of Houston, Texas. One day my father decided to mount a basketball backboard and goal on the left side of the house, the side of the house where the driveway was.
He placed the goal toward the rear of the house where the driveway widened out and came right up to the brick wall so we could have a little room to practice lay-ups and shoot from approximately fifteen feet in any direction, like free-throw line range. The backboard was not mounted directly to the bricks but to the wooden eave of the house that, because of the kind of roof it was, came down to the first-floor level at the front and the back of the house. But my dad made certain that the rim was precisely a regulation ten-foot above the ground.
My brother, father, and I had a lot of fun playing basketball on our little court. We typically played “H-O-R-S-E” and “Around the World.”
I remember that whenever we boys would start getting better at these game, my father would have to start practicing so that we didn’t beat him. He would sometimes be out there practicing in the middle of the night!
I found a great solace in shooting hoops by myself. If I was studying for a test and my mind got overstuffed, I would just go out and shoot the basketball for awhile until my brain felt rested enough to take on whatever I was studying.
Then one day something amazing happened. I don’t know how I hit upon the idea but I suddenly realized that if I ran full speed at the wall and lifted my right foot up just as I reached the brick wall, I could plant my right foot on the wall about two feet off the ground and push upward. There was enough friction between my tennis shoes and brick wall that I did not slide down. Indeed I could jump high enough that I could touch the rim. Now that was a thrill.
With practice I got better and better at this “wall jumping” that I was soon able to go up to the wall as if I was going to do a lay-up and, with both hands on the ball, push up and off the wall, and while turning my upper body toward the rim, soar to a height where I could slam the ball down through the hoop.
Now I should add that I was not very tall in high school. Indeed I was the shortest boy in my sophomore class, like 5 foot 3 inches tall.
I remember very clearly as a sophomore I only weighed 89 pounds because in PE we had to wrestle in various weight groups and I was placed in the 105 pounds and under weight class, the lowest class. Everybody else weighed over 100 pounds and I weighed only 89 pounds. But however short and skinny, I was fast and had strong legs. The combination of strong legs and low body weight undoubtedly made it easy for me to push up and off the wall.
The only thing that was slightly dangerous about this was the coming down because by the time I finished dunking the ball I was at least five feet off the ground. Fortunately another one of my favorite activities when I was young when jumping off things. My friends and I would play “Cops and Robbers” or “Cowboys and Indians” and, at the drop of the hat, I would climb up on the roof of my house so I could get shot and fall to the ground. A ten-foot drop was nothing to me.
The only time I remember getting hurt by jumping was the time when I was thought I was Superman. Tie a towel around my neck and drape it over my shoulders and back and, pow, I became Superman. Well this one time I jumped out a tree house that was probably fifteen foot off the ground and sprained my ankle. Otherwise I was invulnerable!
Curiously I don’t remember ever showing my dunking ability to anybody. I don’t remember my parents or siblings ever seeing me do it. I know I never did the dunk in a game of “H-O-R-S-E”. It was just something for me.
But I do remember I had this fantasy that just as I was reaching the top of my arc that a basketball coach would happen to be driving down the street, see me, and want to sign me to some big contract. How I thought they would never figure out that I needed a wall to be able to dunk the basketball, I don’t know. But it was a great fantasy that I kept up for a few years.
After graduating from high school and heading off to college, I seemed to have stopped dunking whenever I came home for the weekend or summer vacation. I don’t know why I stopped dunking. Maybe I grew more fearful of hurting myself. Maybe the magic had worn off. But I hadn’t dunked the ball for a couple of years when I found myself playing basketball one day in my friend Chuck’s driveway.
We were just shooting the ball around when suddenly I had this sudden flash of brilliance! I noticed that his backboard and goal were centered above his family’s two-car garage. And immediately underneath the goal between the two open garage doors was a brick column, about one foot in width. I looked at that brick column and was sizing it up. It seemed to me if I ran hard at the column and got my right foot planted just right I could dunk the ball just like I used to do at my house.
There were some complicating factors. One, I hadn’t dunked the ball in a couple of years so maybe I would be a little off. Second, the brick column was only one foot wide rather than an entire wall like I had at home. Third, the column was directly under the goal whereas I would usually plant my right foot well to the right of the goal so that I could twist to my left in order to dunk the ball from the side of the rim. If I planted my foot directly under the goal, I would have to push up and away from the wall and dunk the ball from the front of the rim. I had never really tried to do that.
Frankly, I had never been too adventurous in my dunking. I had one standard dunk. Run to the wall, grab the ball with two hands, plant my right foot to the right of the goal, jump up and twist to the left, slam the ball down into the hoop, land. I never tried anything fancy like a one-hand dunk, behind the back dunk, grabbing on to the hoop. I did no 360 degree spins, no double pumps, no windmill dunks, no under the leg dunks or elbow hangs.
But you have to remember that in the early 1970s when I was doing my two-handed slam dunk – what later became known as a two-handed tomahawk dunk – that was like the only kind of dunk around, made most famous by Doctor J (Julius Erving). Of course, Doctor J would do his slam dunk soaring from the free throw line and didn’t have a wall.
Still there sizing up my friend’s backboard and rim, even with all the challenges, I decided I could do it. But I didn’t just go and try to do it. I decided to see if I anybody would take a bet that I couldn’t dunk the basketball.
I should add that I had a tradition of getting people to bet me that I couldn’t do something. And I was real cheap. I remember one time when I was still in high school my Explorer Post went on a canoe trip on the Buffalo and White Rivers in Arkansas.
When the trip was over we camped for a couple of days at Bull Shoals State Park just below the dam.
The dam would release water at certain times a day into the White River and the flow would be pretty fast. But at other times there was no flow and the water was really still. But whatever time of day the water, coming from the bottom of Bull Shoals Lake, was extremely cold. I remember somebody saying it was 37 degrees Fahrenheit. And having gone down to wash dishes in the river I would agree with that temperature. It was the coldest water I had ever washed dishes in!
And yet, as cold as that water was, I decided to see if I could get anybody to bet me that I wouldn’t swim across the river and swim back again. Now, with the dam not releasing water, it was probably thirty yards from bank to bank. I could easily swim that length in normal temperatures but what would happen in freezing cold waters I had no idea. I might have a heart attack. I might get hypothermia. If I started drowning in the middle of the river, who was going to help me? Anybody else in their right mind might seriously doubt whether I would drown in the attempt.
I think the consensus thinking was that I would never do it, I would chicken out before even attempting to swim across the river. But they didn’t know me. I finally accepted the highest offer – a can of Coke. I told you I was cheap. But it wasn’t the size of wager that mattered. It was the principle of the thing! Somebody was challenging me that I couldn’t do something that I said I could!
Well, the next morning the dam was not releasing any water. We actually didn’t know when it was scheduled to release water so another complicating factor was that the dam could start releasing water while I was swimming and I’d have to fight the current, or perhaps after I had reached the other side and then I’d be rather stuck. I believe the dam blew a horn or something a short time before it started releasing water. No matter.
Dressed in my regular swimming suit, I walked to the edge of the water. There were about 20 of my Explorer Post members – including our esteemed adult leader Joe Martin who I think was the one who actually bet the Coke – gathered around the river to watch this foolhardy attempt to swim the fricking cold White River.
I put my toe in the water and immediately it registered the kind of pain I felt washing dishes in the river. Never mind that. I put my foot in. And then my other foot. Both feet immediately went numb. And I continued to go in deeper, each body part going immediately numb as it entered the water.
I kept walking until the water was deep enough that I had to start swimming. I started doing the sidestroke I had learned in Boy Scouts. No way was I going to put my head in that water! I had absolutely no sensation in any part of my body below the neck. I was doing a steady sidestroke and breathing very rapidly.
I suddenly became aware of another possibility from swimming. I could easily hyperventilate if I kept this up. But I was an automaton, sidestroking and hyperventilating across the river, until I reached shallow water on the other side and I got up and started walking to the opposite bank. The whole swim only took about thirty seconds.
Surprising I had enough muscle tone left that my legs did not cave on me when I stood up. I climbed up on a rock and suddenly felt the sun on my body. The sun had never felt so good. My body was tingling all over as my nerve endings that had totally shut down started firing again. I became aware of all the other people on the other side cheering and shouting for me to swim back. Standing there on that rock in the sunshine, the furthest thing from my mind was getting back in that water!
But then I remembered the bet was to swim across and back. No can of Coke until I had completed the task. So I steeled myself to get back in the water. Amazingly the swim back across the White River was not so bad. I think my body was still pretty numb so I don’t remember it as being as cold as when I first entered the water. Before I knew it I was back across and everybody was cheering. Somebody put a towel around me and I went off to take a nice, hot shower.
And that was pretty much the end of it although my friends would bring up the feat for years afterwards whenever we would start talking about the stupid things we had done. As for the Coke, I actually had to remind Joe Martin when we stopped for lunch on our drive back home to Houston that he had bet me a Coke. What an anticlimax but I did get my Coke!
And now I was trying to get my friends to bet me that I couldn’t dunk the basketball. Again I think we settled on a can of Coke, the standard bet for foolhardy dares.
There was no opportunity to practice the dunk. It was an all-or-nothing, one-shot only performance. The minute they realized what I was trying to do, they would start arguing whether it was a dunk at all if I used the brick column. I was attempting shock and awe, thinking outside the box.
So here goes. From the street-end of the driveway I started dribbling the ball. Ten feet away I picked up the ball with both hands and accelerated toward the brick column. I lifted my right leg to plant my right foot on the brick column just like I had done so many times before at my house.
Then the problems began. I decided for some reason at the last minute that I should plant my right foot as close to the right side of the foot-wide column as I could because I suddenly realized that if I was right under the rim I might actually hit my head on the rim on my way up. If I was a little to the right I could come up on the side of the rim, twist my body to the left and slam dunk the ball on the side of the rim the way I had always done in the past. What I hadn’t counted on was that foot-wide brick column was already a pretty small target and, if I was trying to get my foot as far to the right as I could, that was an even smaller target.
As I went up with my right foot I ended up only catching the right edge of the column. I didn’t get my foot planted and my body was now hurtling at the brick column. I managed to twist my upper body to avoid a full collision and ended up scraping my entire back across the brick, tearing up my skin. I was writhing in agony.
As for my friends, totally unsympathetic to my very real pain, they were roaring with laughter. What the hell was this idiot trying to do?! They didn’t see the years of practice that went into what I was trying to do. They didn’t see the major challenges I faced with the brick column. All they saw was an idiot charging a brick column and scraping his back all up. Everybody expected me to simply jump up and come up two feet short of the rim. What the hell was the idiot thinking?!
I don’t know if I ever tried to explain to my friends the physics of the dunk I was trying to pull off. I know I never invited them to my house to show them that I could dunk. Again once they knew that I was going to jump off the wall, the issue would no longer be whether I could dunk the ball but whether what I was doing was technically a dunk. I might as well have used a ladder to dunk the ball!
I never did dunk another ball after that fiasco. Frankly I never even thought about trying it again. It was like something I did as a kid that you abandon when you are a grown-up. But I’m pretty sure if somebody wants to bet me a can of Coke today, I could still pull it off. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at this video!