Four Months to Dunk Day
This is probably a dumb idea
It's July 26th, and I have a little over four months to dunk a basketball. The good news is I'm feeling the bounciest I've ever felt, the bad news is I'm a 5'10" half-white Mexican who can count on one hand the number of times I’ve grazed a regulation, 10’ hoop. It’s three. I have vivid snapshots of each of those times. So why am I trying to dunk a basketball?
The Why behind this a mix of aging, inspiration, stubbornness, and some well intended but poorly framed words. And to see what I can do! As a teaser, here’s the oldest photo in my Google Photos. It is, in fact, me trying to dunk a basketball. On a 9’ hoop. Dated March 31, 2010. I think I missed the dunk. Let’s ride!
For starters, I’m an avid hoops fan. It’s been my sport of preference to play ever since I aged out of youth flag football and realized I was much more likely to be knocked down in real football than to be the one knocking others down. After one season of being stuck on O-Line/D-Line in 7th grade, I hung up my cleats with an illustrious career statline of one tackle, one no-call holding, and zero significant snaps played.
So it was on to basketball, where the combination of incredible genetics and raw athleticism, including a vertical leap measuring 18” in high school served me well enough to start. On Junior Varsity. As a junior. (Quick math side bar: a standard hoop is 10 feet tall. That’s 120 inches. To dunk, you need to have the ball several inches higher to then put it down. At 5’10”, I have 70 inches down. Throw in that killer vertical of 18 more inches and that brings our total to 88. That leaves 32 inches, and having arms helps with this in some manner, but in short, we have some work to do.) But along the way something interesting happened. You see, I didn’t start playing basketball until 8th grade and was out of my element against kids that had been playing AAU since elementary school. But I could see my own growth in the midst of those three seasons. I wouldn’t say I fell in love with the work, something you hear the stories about Kobe Bryant saying as he would go workout at 3AM, but I did really enjoy seeing my progress. It should be no surprise, dear reader, that I sucked when I first started hooping (my first game of freshman year, I was all alone on a fastbreak, had a decent pass come to me, and was so amped up that I over-jumped, lost my footing, and knocked the ball out of bounds. I was the only player that game to have a negative total impact on the score based on the coach’s scoring system. These things stick with you). But by my senior year, after three years of putting in the work, I could hold my own against my friends in pickup. I decided not to play senior year (only high school non-varsity athlete of my four brothers and I, another fun fact) to focus on school, but found pickup freeing and a ton of fun. It was nice to go at it with my other non-varsity hoops friends, and to feel like I was holding my own. At one point, the varsity head coach told me he would’ve enjoyed a side by side of me as a freshman and me as a senior, because the growth stood out that much.
So I’m all about the progress. Me vs. me. In college, that took on a whole new level. I went to D-III Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and with, to quote TI, all the swagger of a college kid, figured that D-III hoops couldn’t be too crazy and that I should try and walk on and see what would happen. I went to a pre-orientation program for minorities and athletes (I’m sure it was for some grant recipients more specifically, but it was literally just minorities and athletes) and met some of the freshmen from the hoops team. None of them were physical specimens, so I figured I should give it a try. I asked the coach what he thought about it, and he essentially told me if I put in the work we could see what would happen.
The work started with two weeks of conditioning at 4:30AM. Just what every college freshman does with their newfound freedom, right?
There were two other guys trying to walk on as well, and then the team of actual recruited athletes. And boy, was I wrong about everything. I hopped in to the conditioning and found that I moved as fast as the big men, finishing at or behind the guys that had a foot of height and probably 75 pounds on me. But at 5’10” I didn’t have a whole lot more to offer. To compound that, the second day of conditioning, one of the other walk-on hopefuls ran in right at 4:30 and put his shoes on as we lined up for the first runs of the day. I’ve never seen someone get chewed out quite like that my life. At the end of another grueling practice, when I’d rather still be several hours away from waking up, the coach muttered something to me along the lines of “If you ever try some **** like that I’ll cut your *** so ******* quick.” Good times! Needless to say I was not late to a practice. And by a stroke of grace (or common sense for him) the other walk on, who was way better than I was, decided this wasn’t for him. That left me to be the lone walk-on (and the lone college athlete of the family), with a season statline of 8 minutes played (they round up when you play for seconds), no points scored, one assist, one turnover, two rebounds, and no fouls committed.
However, I might have had the single greatest rebounding night in history per 40 minutes. You see, those two rebounds (two airballs that fell into my lap in garbage time but still counts) both came in one game. And as the stats nerds love to do, you can prorate a player’s performance across the length of the game, which would be per 40 minutes in college hoops. Let’s do the math together: 2 rebounds in 1 minute X 40 = 80 rebounds per 40 minutes. I don’t think Shaq ever had a statline like that.
The season ended with a disappointing loss in the conference tournament final, with a bid to March Madness at stake. Bet you didn’t know DIII hoops has a 64 team tourney just like the one you watch every year! This blog is so informative. I realized that I had another great example of growth against myself, being able to put college athlete on my resume, but also came to my senses and realized that was probably enough college hoops and that I was a long way from ever meaningfully contributing. But man, was my pickup game on point!
Back to dunking a basketball. You have a detailed (too detailed? You’re still reading?) look into my mix of wild belief that I can do things, love of growth that comes from trying to do said thing, and stubbornness to not give up on that thing. The next thing we need to add in is stepping into the twilight of my 20s and staring down turning 30. November 30th is that day. I’m not one for being overly dramatic about turning 30, I’ve accepted that aging is the way this ride is going (Siri, play Stop This Train by John Mayer) and I’m not going to fight that. As far as I can tell, no one has won that fight, so why try? But, I do recognize that with the aging comes decreased athleticism and increased responsibilities in other facets of life. Like a job. And friends. And down the road, a wife and a family. So setting a goal of 30 seemed like a reasonable thing to do, in that I don’t know when this gets any easier.
That brings us to our final point in how I got inspired to dunk a basketball. Remember that math side bar, with an 18” vertical in high school over half my life ago? My brother is Doctor of Physical Therapy, and we were home for the holidays. Among various random workouts, stretches, and the like, he offhandedly mentioned: “Tim, if you wanted to, you could dunk a basketball.”
Well of course I want to dunk a basketball! Dunking a basketball is one of the ultimate human feats of athleticism. Literally defying gravity to put an orange sphere through a differently orange cylinder. An unbelievable combination of grace, finesse, and raw power. I won’t try and describe it anymore, please instead enjoy this 10 minute highlight reel from YouTube of the best dunks of all time.
So you’re telling me that I can do something remotely resembling that? Wild move there, Doctor. What a seed to plant. That notion is only compounded by this incredible long form piece from Michael McKnight, who at age 41, and standing only 6’1”, learned to dunk. Set aside 15 minutes and read his piece. I had read it back in college and thought it was a neat story, but now someone close to me is telling me it’s possible? Game on.
So here I am, four months away. I’ve been doing plyometrics like this at least twice a week:
And gotten back to weightlifting, for the first time since pre-pandemic.
Today, I jumped onto a 44” box. I’ve never been able to do that before. I’m feeling real good! I even had someone impressed my plyos enough to jump on a 20” box, turn to me and say “I jumped on one too!”
I still can’t touch the rim right now. I have no idea how this is gonna go but it’s gonna be fun to document. I promise other updates won’t be as long as this one, but thanks for reading, and joining me on this journey. I hope you enjoy. Let’s send it out with some Van Halen: