What is the point of dunking? Sure, there are plenty of obvious reasons: it scores points in an efficient manner, it looks impressive, and it is fun to do. But, as far as I know, nobody has ever looked deeper into the matter, to glean the societal and philosophical implications of the basketball shot known as the “slam dunk”.
There is social capital to be gained by dunking. In a society where men are constantly attempting to claw to the top of the ladder through a multitude of different techniques, dunking basketballs is one of the most direct paths towards improving your standing in the hierarchy. Flaunting one’s dunking ability to a potential mate is the surest way to ensure the continuation of your genes. One could stop the investigation there, and state simply, “basketball players are seen as the highest-quality mates because of their superior physical gifts, gifts which provide them a nearly-insurmountable advantage over a man of average size and ability.” While accurate, this still does not address the whole question.
It is a scientific fact that every dunk performed by an individual increases the potency of that individual’s gametes (in most cases, sperm, or as I like to call them, “spermies”). Take, for example, Andre Drummond. Each ball he propels through the hoop is acknowledged by his reproductive system, and his sperm get incrementally more likely to reach the egg of a female mate. Additionally, his body secretes elevated levels of pheromones, signalling to nearby females that his seed is of the highest fertility. These things happen every single time he executes a slam dunk, whether in practice or in a game.
In this way, the basketball player becomes significantly more desirable than the average male. To make the situation even more lopsided, the virility of a basketball player is such that he can engage in the act of copulation with as many as thirty women in a day, a feat which is made easy to achieve by the willingness of the women in his environment. The “sex deficit” becomes so heavily skewed towards women that the average male will only experience intercourse .04 times in his life, all because of a few fortunate men who are tall enough to jump into the air and throw a ball into a ten-foot-high ring.
There is good news to be taken from this. In a few generations, every child on planet earth will be born from this hyper-athletic stock, and nearly everybody will be able to dunk. Then, the social capital to be gained from dunking will be diminished, and womankind as a whole will find a new way to measure the suitability of potential mates. However, this is no comfort to the nowadays man, languishing in a loveless abyss, forever tormented by Herculean, basketball-jamming macho-men.
I wish I had a girlfriend.