A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DUNK
CHAPTER IV: DOUBTING NAISMITH
Once mankind invented the ball, the proverbial snowball began to gather momentum when it came to the development of sports. Precursors to soccer, rugby, cricket, and volleyball all began to be played at various points in antiquity. Many of these newly conceived sports featured few dunklike actions, but many also required of the participant to guide the ball into some kind of “scoring pod”. Depending on the action undertaken to get the ball into the goal, a subset of these sports contained, as the Mesoamerican “ball game” did, rudimentary dunking.
Modern basketball fans will be displeased to find out that it was not until the invention of the actual sport of basketball did any dunks occur which would fit today’s basketball-centric definition. As has been explored earlier in this work, dunks have been happening since the very inception of the universe, however, it is unlikely that even one of them would ever grace the airwaves of ESPN or NBA TV, even if they had been recorded on some sort of film medium that would allow for their rebroadcast.
When Dr. James Naismith nailed his peach baskets to the ten-foot-high balcony of his gymnasium, that was when the machinery of the dunk creaked to life, machinery that would never again be mothballed in the factory of human sporting achievement. Without the upraising of those baskets near the end of the 19th century, there would be no basketball, there would be no NBA, there would be no dunks, and there would most definitely be no dunkilations.
But even Dr. Naismith dismissed the idea of the dunk when it was brought forward to him. His personal letters to other educators indicate that he had never even thought about the possibility of a person jumping so high off the ground so as to deposit the basketball directly into the basket from above:
“Dear Dr. Trenton,
What you have proposed in your latest letter is, to state it bluntly, preposterous. No man of average height, or even of height well exceeding that of the average man, could ever jump high enough to reach with his fingertips a goal placed ten feet above the ground. Only those unfortunate souls afflicted with various forms of gigantism could hope to perform such a feat, and, as I’m sure you well know, there is no precedent for such an individual to possess the fleetness of foot necessary to compete in any type of organized athletics.
My new sport of “basket ball” will embody the values of teamwork, nimbleness, and dexterity: not feats of raw power as you so rudely suggest. No, feats of power and speed will remain where they should: on the running track or the wrestling mat.
Before you pen more drivel for my weary eyes to gaze upon, you may want to consider when you last invented an entirely new sport. Your ponderance will last for some time, as I am quite sure that you have never accomplished such a thing. In fact, I believe that your only professional accomplishment to date is to have your name appear on a list of known homosexuals published by your local news-paper.
-James Naismith”
[letter provided by the Naismith Basketball Foundation]
In due time, Dr. Naismith would be proven wrong. However, for several decades, his prediction held true, and the athletes of that era were held dunkless. Not until a dusty summer afternoon in the year 1929 did the modern dunk first get dunked…