Latest news with #Sielski
The Guardian
05-03-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Magic in the air: how the slam dunk evolved alongside basketball
You can still see the moment online, 42 years later: The Philadelphia 76ers' Julius Erving pulling off his January 1983 'rock the cradle' dunk against the Los Angeles Lakers. Yes, Dr. J cradles the ball in his arm as he goes airborne and slams it home over the Lakers' Michael Cooper. 'It's the greatest dunk of all time,' says Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist Mike Sielski. Sielski has the authority to say so. He is the author of a recently published book, Magic in the Air: The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk. Within its pages, you can relive those long-ago highlights from Dr J. The same goes for the epic 1988 NBA Slam Dunk Contest battle between Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins. There's an unforgettable moment from college basketball: Lorenzo Charles dunking to win the 1983 NCAA championship for NC State over Houston and its Phi Slama Jama roster. There are bittersweet moments as well: Gravity-defying stars who, for various reasons, fizzled in the pros (David Thompson) or never made it there at all ('Jumpin'' Jackie Jackson and Earl 'The Goat' Manigault). The book delves into the origins of dunking and the perhaps unanswerable question of who was the first to dunk. The pioneers include Jack Inglis – who reportedly hung on to the cage surrounding a court and threw the ball into the net – and Bernard Dobbas, who was powerful off the court too: He reportedly slew a mountain lion with his bare hands. There was also the 1936 US Olympian Joe Fortenberry, who hailed from the unconventionally named town of Happy, Texas. The narrative explores dunking's subsequent appeal to Black players during the civil rights era, when its top practitioners included Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and a UCLA standout named Lew Alcindor. After a sensational sophomore season from the future Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the dunk was controversially and mysteriously banned from high school and college play for nearly a decade. What brought the dunk back in favor? Sielski credits the upstart ABA and its popular slam dunk contest. The ABA-NBA merger brought dunking experts like Dr J into the NBA, while a younger generation, which included Jordan, created new memories in the dunk contest. There is also a chapter on trailblazers in women's basketball – Georgeann Wells, Charlotte Smith and Sylvia Crawley. The book examines the reported decline in dunking today, while noting there are still NBA players who make it an essential part of their game, from to unlikely dunk contest champion Mac McClung. 'I wanted it to be a fun ride, to feel like a journey,' Sielski says, 'where the reader and I journeyed together to different places, different eras, fun stuff about the history of basketball, and stuff tangentially connected to basketball, so you would enjoy the ride.' The author did a fair amount of journeying for the book, making multiple road trips. Yes, he did travel to Happy, Texas, a suburb of Amarillo. There, he met Oliver Fortenberry, whose late father Joe had played for Team USA at the notorious 1936 Games in Berlin. Sielski got to hold Joe Fortenberry's gold medal. He also got a warning to watch out for rattlesnakes. Then there was the trip to Raleigh, including a local restaurant with a name honoring the famed NC State coach Jim Valvano – Jimmy V's Osteria and Bar. The score on the wall is always 54-52, the final of the 1983 NCAA championship, decided by Charles's dunk. Sielski also visited Murray State, where Morant parlayed his dunking skills into big-man-on-campus status before leaving college early for the NBA. Yet there was one journey the author couldn't make – to the offices of the NCAA in Indianapolis. Sielski wanted access to the organization's presidential archives – specifically, with regard to the late NCAA president Walter Byers. Sielski was trying to document why the college (and high school) basketball establishment had banned the dunk from 1967 to 1976. Sielski points out that 1967 'was a year after Texas Western beat Kentucky for the national championship,' with an all-Black starting five defeating an all-white starting five, 'after Lew Alcindor dominated college basketball in his sophomore season [at UCLA], the only season he could dunk the ball legally. Statistically, it was the best season of his college career. You can't separate that decade [1967-76] and those who tried to keep the sport 'as it should be' from what was going on in society writ large.' He adds: 'The ultimate act of dominance on a basketball court is to dunk over someone. It was an opportunity for Black men during the 50s, 60s and 70s. In society at large, Black people were fighting for their rightful place and piece of the American Dream.' Formally, the ban was issued by the National Basketball Committee, a since-disbanded overseeing group for high school and college ball. The NCAA, on the other hand, is very much around, and that's where Sielski made inquiries through email and was dissatisfied with what he received. 'It got to the point where I said: 'Look, if you don't let me see the documents, I'm going to print our email exchange verbatim in the book, everyone can draw their own conclusions,'' he says. 'I haven't heard back from them since.' Sielski's previous book was on Kobe Bryant. After finishing it, he and his agent were brainstorming ideas for another project. He says he was inspired by his friend and fellow sports journalist Tyler Kepner's book K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches. He admired a book with chapters that could be read either sequentially or randomly and was, regardless, a good read. 'I thought of doing something similar through basketball,' Sielski says. 'The more I thought about big moments and big figures in the sport, they were all connected with the ability to dunk – Jordan, Julius Erving.' There's an element of mythology to dunking's history, the author notes, including protagonists who were larger than life literally and figuratively, whether through height, wizardry above the rim, or both. 'People like to say Michael Jordan took off from the foul line at the 1988 dunk contest,' Sielski says. 'Or that Julius Erving took off from the foul line at the 1976 ABA dunk contest. They really did not.' The author laments that the mythmaking and flamboyant play symbolized by dunking has given way to the analytical approach represented by the three-point shot. 'It's so much more analytical,' Sielski says. 'The Celtics take and make the most three-pointers in the league … I think the game is suffering for it.' He sees an antidote in McClung's wins at the dunk contest. The book notes that McClung's spectacular dunks have gained millions of views online, while tweaking a stereotype summarized in the title of a hit movie: White Men Can't Jump. 'A 6ft 2in white guy, it appears challenging for him,' Sielski says, but adds that McClung can 'jump over a car, do a 540-degree spin' en route to a dunk. In this, there's a connection to the greats of the past. 'Watching him dunk the ball goes back to that sense of wonder, an appreciation of the athleticism of the athletes, the players who dunked years ago, when it first appeared,' Sielski says.
Boston Globe
22-02-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
‘Magic in the Air' is a slam dunk on a game that was defined by its joyful pursuit of aesthetic brilliance
In the aftermath of last weekend's NBA's All-Star debacle — which felt not like a celebration of the sport, but more like a corporate retreat hosted by an achingly obnoxious Kevin Hart , with intermittent basketball interludes — Sielski's lines more than lingered. It felt like a diagnosis demanding an overdue treatment. Advertisement So I asked him: How do we get back there again? ' Adam Silver sure would like to know,'' said Sielski of the NBA commissioner. 'You know what I think it is? I think there's an aesthetic aspect that basketball is missing.' Not entirely, and not all the time, he noted. We agreed that Stephen Curry sticking long-distance daggers into Team France, for instance, during the gold medal men's basketball game in the Paris Olympics is about as aesthetically pleasing as sports can be. But familiarity and redundancy has sapped a sense of wonder, Sielski said. Mac McClung — the G-Leaguer and gymnast-in-basketball-gear who jumped over a car on his way to winning the dunk contest for the third straight year — is the rare exception. And even McClung comes with a bit of a sideshow aspect considering he has played all of five NBA minutes this season. 'The true joy of basketball derives from watching these athletes do what they do in a breathtaking way,'' said Sielski. 'The reason McClung is brought back for the dunk contest, and the reason why people remain interested in him, is because physically he defies every stereotype. He's a short white guy, which suggests to the average viewer that there's a challenge in him dunking the ball. It seems extraordinary when we see him do it and I think that sense of wonder has been lost because we've seen so much that it's impossible to match the feeling of seeing Julius Erving or Michael Jordan dunk for the first time. That feeling is retained a little bit with someone like McClung, sort of like with [5-foot-6-inch dunk champion] Spud Webb in the '80s. Advertisement 'Basketball right now needs more of those feelings, the sense that you're watching something extraordinary and maybe even unprecedented. The NBA has to find a way back to that somehow.' Such joy is easily found in Sielski's book, which is not a chronological narrative history of the dunk, but structured rather as a series of compelling chapter-by-chapter stories that could stand as exceptional long-form features on their own. My favorites were on Joe Fortenberry , a massive Texan who played for the 1936 US Olympic team in Germany and was credited by New York Times sportswriter Arthur Daley with the first dunk, and David Thompson , the sky-walker for North Carolina State at a time when dunking was banned by the NCAA, and later an ABA and NBA superstar who became a what-if with the Denver Nuggets. 'I wanted to write a book that would be in-depth and tell the story of something in full, but also would be something that someone could pick up and read Chapter 8, and then Chapter 4, and each one would just be it's own self-contained entity,'' said Sielski, who said he was inspired by his friend Tyler Kepner's book, 'K'', which told the story of baseball through history of all the different pitches. 'I realized that the dunk would allow me to write about all of these gigantic figures in sport — Jordan and Dr. J and Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain — and tell some lesser-known stories too, like Joe Fortenberry's. Advertisement 'The end result, I think,'' he said, 'is that the book itself is full of joy.' Netflix's "Court of Gold" is worth a Thirty Ink Basketball docs are must-watch While the NBA may be searching for certain answers, we might just be in a golden age of documentaries about basketball. Netflix's 'Court of Gold,'' a behind-the-scenes look at the men's basketball competition at last summer's Paris Olympics, will turn you into a Kevin Durant fan if you're not already. And not just because he wears a Bruins hat through much of the six-part series. HBO Max's 'We Beat The Dream Team' doc — a way overdue telling of the band of US college stars that beat the original (and, really, only) Dream Team in a scrimmage during their tuneup for the '92 Olympics — is also excellent. And, around here, the most anticipated basketball doc of all – HBO Max's epic nine-part 'Celtics City' docuseries, executive produced by Bill Simmons – drops March 3. ESPN, MLB to end partnership The word Thursday night that ESPN and Major League Baseball will mutually end their 3½ decade rights partnership after this season wasn't a surprise, though it was not expected to be announced this soon. But for those of us that permanently have the 'Baseball Tonight' theme song rattling around in our heads, it is sad news. As Celtics radio voice Sean Grande noted on Thursday night's broadcast, it's disconcerting that ESPN is splitting with baseball, and TNT and the NBA are going their separate ways in the same year. Two sports television divorces that we couldn't have imagined even a few years ago … Ch. 7 is carrying four Red Sox spring training broadcasts, starting with Sunday's 1 p.m. matchup with the Blue Jays … Joe Buck will call a national MLB game for the first time since leaving Fox in 2021 when he handles play-by-play for the Yankees-Brewers Opening Day matchup on ESPN. I've missed Buck on baseball, so count me among those who have longed to hear it. Advertisement Chad Finn can be reached at
Los Angeles Times
07-02-2025
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
The heady history of the slam dunk (and how street style stormed the NBA)
Chances are you've heard of Julius Erving and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. You would have to be culturally illiterate to be unfamiliar with Michael Jordan. But I'd bet money that you don't know the story of Jack Inglis, who shares space with the legends in Mike Sielski's new book 'Magic in the Air.' Inglis played pro basketball in the World War I era in the New York State League and Pennsylvania State League. This was when basketball courts were wrapped in wire fencing, or cages (hence the use of the word 'cagers' to describe basketball players). Inglis, a superb athlete for his day, was known to climb up the fence alongside the basket, grab a pass with one hand, and drop it into the hoop from above. It was, as Sielski writes, 'an early version of the slam dunk.' This is the kind of hoops history you didn't know you craved, and which Sielski's fast break of a dunk study delivers in abundance. But 'Magic' does more than provide juicy tidbits. In lacing up a lively history of the slam dunk, Sielski, a sports columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer who writes with his profession's characteristic flavor and flair, digs into the social and racial implications of sports' most exciting play. He uses the stories of key athletes and moments to paint a bigger picture of a sport's evolution from earthbound (and rather slow) competition to sky-high (and very fast) exuberance. 'Magic in the Air' honors the dunk as a great feat of American improvisation, probably not as significant as jazz but not entirely dissimilar. Like most revolutionary developments, the rise of the dunk struck fear in the establishment's heart. The NCAA even banned the dunk from 1967 to 1976, which, when you think about it, is remarkably stupid: Hey, let's eliminate the most kinetic part of the game, the play that makes fans stand and cheer like no other. As Sielski writes, 'The rule seemed first and foremost a way to squelch the individual expression and athleticism that characterized the sport throughout urban America and that was intrinsic to the manner in which Black athletes played it.' In short, the dunk was just too street. The ban was loudly championed by legendary Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp, whose all-white squad had just been spanked in the finals by a Texas Western (now University of Texas at El Paso) team that made history by starting five Black players. 'It wasn't just that players were dunking,' Sielski writes. 'It was that Black players were dunking. And they were dunking while they were beating his team.' (Ironically, the best player on that Kentucky team, Pat Riley, would go on to preside over the dunk-happy Showtime Lakers teams of the '80s). There are many approaches one could take toward writing such a book. A stats and analytics obsessive, like Henry Abbott, might unfurl a study of leaping launch points and game situations in which the dunk makes the most sense. A run-of-the-mill aggregator could produce a glorified, book-length blog post ranking the best dunks and dunkers. Sielski chooses to apply a refreshingly human, old-school touch; 'Magic in the Air' reads like a series of deeply reported, interconnected feature stories, rich in history and authorial voice. When Sielski writes about the saga of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault, a 6-foot-1 New York playground legend who soared among the giants but couldn't stay away from heroin and other lures of the streets, he's also writing about why Manigault's story is catnip to (usually white) journalists looking for a certain kind of story — a story Manigault was always happy to tell. 'Go ahead,' Sielski writes. 'Pull up a chair or knock on his door, if you could pin down where he lived. He would tell you all about it, be genuinely wistful about his missed opportunities, open up and give you the goods. No athlete was in the passenger's seat for more reporter ride-alongs than The Goat.' There are, of course, bigger names here as well. They include Jordan, whose style, hang time and acrobatic dunking were as popular in corporate boardrooms as they were on playgrounds; Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, who shook up the game with their athleticism and size in the '50s and '60s; and David 'Skywalker' Thompson, who, at 6-foot-4, dominated college basketball while starring for North Carolina State but had to settle for gently laying the ball in due to the dunk ban. (Did we mention how stupid the dunk ban was?) This has quietly been a great era for basketball books, including Rich Cohen's 'When the Game Was War,' Chris Herring's 'Blood in the Garden,' Jeff Pearlman's 'Showtime' (about those Riley Laker teams), and Hanif Abdurraqib's 'There's Always This Year.' 'Magic in the Air' belongs on the top shelf with those. For a study of life above the rim, its tone is down-to-earth and also briskly colloquial and infused with infectious passion for the sport. Chris Vognar is a freelance culture writer.
