Cross That One Off The List

Everyone has that list of things they want to do before they die.  Most of the stuff on my list is pretty simple – see Prague, learn “Everlong” on the guitar, learn Italian, stuff like that.  There was really only one thing on my list that would be impossible to do before too long – dunk a basketball.  I’ve gotten pretty close a couple of times, even dunking a rugby ball and a volleyball before, but never a honest-to-goodness dunk of a real basketball.

My problem was two-fold.  First, I was about an inch too short on my vertical leap.  I couldn’t quite get the ball over the lip of the rim.  The second problem compounded the first, and that was my hands were a bit too small.  I would always lose control of the ball when turning over my wrist to bring the ball down.  This led to my patented “Slam the ball off the back iron and hang on the rim and hope it goes in and call that a ‘dunk’ ” move, which as much as I wanted it to be was not a real dunk.

Last night at netball we found a basketball and just screwed around a bit waiting for our game to start.  I did what I do everytime I get a basketball in my hand – try to dunk.  This was the first time I’d tried to dunk since rugby ended, which I think helped a lot.  Rugby takes a real toll on your legs.  Having not done anything too intensive lately, mostly softball, my legs were pretty fresh.  My first attempt felt better than any other jump I’ve ever taken.  I turned to Eamon and said “Give me that, I feel extra springy today.”  Eamon looked at with a weird look “Springy?”  ”Just give me the damn ball.”

I went back and took my normal approach.  I got a good jump and threw it down.  I looked at Eamon and Bobby – “You guys saw that, right!?”  About 4 or 5 people saw me perform an actual dunk of a basketball on a regulation hoop.  I’m going to take my camera to my game next week to try to get video of this momentus event.  I’m really glad I got to dunk before I got too much older.  The window was closing pretty quickly.