During the annual NBA All-Star Weekend, one of the events that people look forward to the most is the slam dunk contest. Lately, it appears that the event has lost some of its luster. One complaint about the slam dunk contest is that it lacks originality.
In 2002 –in what turned out to be one of the worst contests ever– organizers intentionally planned for dunkers to be unoriginal by introducing a wheel of dunks. Competitors had to spin it, ala The Price is Right, and duplicate a classic dunk from previous contests that the pointer landed on. Dominique Wilkins’ windmill dunk was one of the classics that competitors had to duplicate. If executed properly, a dunker would have to jump with both of his feet to initiate the dunk.
As you can see, Jason Richardson executed the dunk with perfection. However, it seems that the two-footed dunk has become a lost art as it is rarely executed except by big men when going up with power without the pizzazz.
Dominique didn’t just dunk that way in contests, dunking with that type of flare normally is what made him the “Human Highlight Film.”
The Pick and Roll caught up with Dominique Wilkins during the 2015 NBA All-Star media session and asked him his thoughts about the two-feet jumping style.
“Everybody can’t do that,” Wilkins quipped as he laughed in regards to the new generation of players not emulating his dunking style.
It turns out that he never planned to be that type of classic dunker, his style was forged out of necessity in efforts to catch a body of one of his opponents that dared to get in the way.
“I started jumping off of two feet by accident, and it happened literally by accident,” said Wilkins. “I was playing against, uh, the Milwaukee Bucks. And I went to the middle, I got cut off and I went back baseline and I planted … and jumped. And Bob Lanier covered the rim. And when I came back around, he was coming down and I was still going up. And I dunked it on the buzzer to win that game. So that’s when the two-footed jump started.”
If you haven’t watched the Wilkins highlight video above, press play and forward to number 1 to see the dunk that Wilkins referenced. I guess we can thank Bob Lanier for helping to create a classic.
