Year of the Dunk (23 page)

Interviews:
Malcolm Burrows, Jeff Moses, Jody Jensen, Charles Austin.

“a novel locking mechanism”:
Malcolm Burrows, “Froghopper Insects Leap to New Heights,”
Nature
424, No. 509 (July 31, 2003), 509.

she could clear the Gateway Arch:
“Move Over Flea, There's a Higher Insect Jumper in Town,” Associated Press, July 30, 2003.

“postal districts packed like squares of wheat”:
Philip Larkin, “The Whitsun Weddings,”
The Whitsun Weddings
(New York: Random House, 1964), 24.

a very fine human hair:
“What Is the Nanoscale?” University of Wisconsin-Madison, MRSEC Education Group,
http://​education.​mrsec.​wisc.​edu/​36.​htm
, accessed July 24, 2014.

An average human being's top reaction time:
Daisy Yuhas, “Speedy Science: How Fast Can You React?”
Scientific American
, May 24, 2012.

“jumping is a self-defeating activity”:
Arthur Chapman,
Biomechanical Analysis of Fundamental Human Movements
(Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2008), 146.

“The less ankle flexibility”:
Jerome,
Staying Supple
, 13.

get on your bathroom scale:
Chapman,
Biomechanical Analysis of Fundamental Human Movements
, 135; Jeff Moses author interview, Aug. 9, 2014. When you raise your arms above your head, you're lifting your center of mass—even if your feet are not leaving the ground. Essentially you're exerting more force on the ground to lift your center of mass while remaining in contact with the ground—that's what the scale is picking up as you lift your arms. Our weight—as measured
by a scale—is simply an expression of the amount of force we're exerting on the earth. When you drop your arms, you're not working as hard against gravity to stay upright—you're lowering your center of mass. So in that moment in which you drop your arms, the scale lightens.

“Intersegmental dynamics”:
Jody L. Jensen, University of Maryland, 1989.

“bodies are different”:
Correspondence with James Click of the Tampa Rays organization, Feb. 2013.

“various as our several constitutions”:
Thoreau,
Walden
, 12.

“a grew-too-fast kid”:
Richard Hoffer,
Something in the Air: American Passion and Defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 4.

through with the sport:
Hoffer,
Something in the Air
, 73.

began quietly tinkering:
“The Fosbury Flop: Scorned Method Is Taking Sport to New Heights,”
Los Angeles Times
, Aug. 4, 1989.

“Fosbury flops over bar”:
“Amazing Turnabout, Backward Technique, Labeled ‘Insane,' Took High Jump to New Heights,”
Dallas Morning News
, June 29, 2003.

lifting his center of mass:
“Science of Sport: The High Jump,”
Kansas City Star
, Aug. 15, 2008.

sometimes for several minutes:
“Fearless Fosbury Flops to Glory,”
New York Times
, Oct. 20, 1968. See also: “Fosbury Flop,” YouTube video,
https://www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=​Id4W6VA0uLc
, accessed Oct. 20, 2013.

the jumpers land on their feet:
Michael Stewart, “Kenyan High School High Jump,” YouTube video,
https://www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=-​qTAeVGl_​e8
, accessed Aug. 18, 2014.

“a generation of broken necks”:
David E. Martin, Dwight Stones et al.,
The High Jump Book
(Los Altos, CA: Tafnews Press, 1987), 9.

By the Munich Olympics:
Dick Fosbury Training Camp, Bowdoin College, “Dick Fosbury Director Bio,”
http://www.​bowdoin.​edu/​~pslovens/​directorbios.​htm
, accessed Aug. 14, 2014.

“in a room with a low ceiling”:
Chapman,
Biomechanical Analysis of Fundamental Human Movements
, page 146.

Allex won the state high school high jump:
“San Marcos' Austin Takes High Jump Gold Medal,”
Austin American-Statesman
, March 31, 2012.

Charles Austin had grown up poor:
Charles Austin,
Head Games: Life's Greatest Challenge
(Austin: TurnKey Press, 2007), 3.

Interviews:
Matt Zeysing.

“You just dunked the ball, man!”:
Darryl Dawkins and Charley Rosen,
Chocolate Thunder: The Uncensored Life and Times of the NBA's Original Showman
(Toronto: Sport Media Publishing, 2003), 24.

“jump that rope to death”:
Charles Barkley and Roy S. Johnson,
Outrageous!
(New York: Avon Books, 1992), 83.

“The old coach looked like I'd just jumped”:
Wilt Chamberlain and David Shaw,
Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door
(New York: Macmillan, 1973), 44.

“If I want to see showmanship”:
Gena Caponi-Tabery,
Jump for Joy: Jazz
,
Basketball
,
and Black Culture in 1930s America
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008), 109. It was also in
Jump for Joy
that I first saw the Zora Neale Hurston quote that opens this book.

“You'd rather look good and lose”:
White Men Can't Jump
, 1992.

After the NBA finally integrated:
Big-time college basketball first integrated in the late 1940s; the NBA saw its first black players take the court in the 1950–51 season.

“subversion of the dominant culture”:
Gena Dagel Caponi,
Signifyin(g)
,
Sanctifyin'
,
& Slam Dunking
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 6.

“class of incorrigibles”:
Interview with Matt Zeysing, June 2012.

“Basketball is for the birds”:
Shirley Povich, “Basketball Is for the Birds,”
Sports Illustrated
, Dec. 8, 1958.

Allen tried to get the rim pulled up to 12 feet:
“The Leaping Legends of Basketball,”
Los Angeles Times
, Feb. 12, 1989.

seize power and express outrage:
Caponi-Tabery,
Jump for Joy
, 106. “The slam dunk returned the locus of power from the owners and coaches to the players,” she writes.

save athletes from injury:
“Chronicle of the Jam,”
NCAA News
, July 30, 2007.

“if I'd been white”:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Peter Knobler,
Giant Steps
(New York: Bantam Books, 1983), 160.

“the six-foot-two brothers”:
Pete Axthelm,
The City Game
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), 127.

who called blacks “coons”:
“Legacy of Rupp Slow to Recede,”
Louisville Courier-Journal
, April 2, 1996.

“Rupp was so disgusted”:
Caponi-Tabery,
Jump for Joy
, 108.

take four steps at a time:
Vincent M. Mallozzi,
Doc: The Rise and Rise of Julius Erving
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2010), 2.

“I felt these different things within me”:
Ibid., 13.

By the time he was 14:
Ibid., 14

“too many nigger boys in it now”:
Terry Pluto,
Loose Balls: The Short
,
Wild Life of the American Basketball Association
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 241.

“an act of desperation”:
Pluto,
Loose Balls
, 25.

possessed by a “chocolate thunder”:
Dawkins and Rosen,
Chocolate Thunder
, 94.

started a betting pool:
Ibid., 94.

A stadium janitor in Detroit:
Ibid., 94.

“no matter how nice and polite”:
Ibid., 96.

white referees called fouls at a greater rate:
Joseph Price and Justin Wolfers, “Discrimination Among NBA Referees,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
125 (Nov. 2010), 1859–87. Similarly, Northwestern University researchers reported that, in the 2010 NFL season, 65 percent of the players were black but they were flagged for 92 percent of the unsportsmanlike conduct penalties for excessive touchdown celebrations: Erika V. Hall and Robert W. Livingston, “The Hubris Penalty: Biased Responses to ‘Celebration' Displays of Black Football Players,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
, Vol. 48 (Feb. 2012), 899–904.

a column called “The Dunkateer”:
Dawkins and Rosen,
Chocolate Thunder
, 114.

“not a traditional source of pleasure”:
Philip Roth,
American Pastoral
(New York: Vintage, 1997), 3.

“one of the last Jewish infants”:
Monroe E. Price,
Objects of Remembrance: A Memoir of American Opportunities and Viennese Dreams
(Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009), 1.

“Dunking is a power game”:
Mallozzi,
Doc
, 12.

“A dunk is just two points”:
Ibid., 208.

Interviews:
Julius Erving, Darryl Dawkins, Tony Mitchell.

“an infinite number of dunk shots”:
Mallozzi,
Doc
, 109.

“that made her ass pop”:
Dawkins and Rosen,
Chocolate Thunder
, 59.

“relinquishing doubt and ambiguity and self-inquiry”:
Richard Ford,
The Sportswriter
(New York: Vintage, 1995), 60.

dunk off his left foot “in his mind”:
“Source: Derrick Rose Cleared to Play,”
ESPNchicago.​com
, March 9, 2013.

“I can't dunk”:
“Nets' Williams Acknowledges His Limits but Plans to Play,”
New York Times
, Feb. 19, 2013.

“My legs feel good”:
“Williams Is Soaring Again,”
New York Times
, April 22, 2013.

“misuses of God's gifts”:
Baylor University, “Sexual Misconduct Policy,” adopted Jan. 15 2007,
http://www.​baylor.​edu/​content/​services/​document.​php?id=​39247
, accessed Nov. 11, 2013.

her hands are nine inches long:
“Brittney Griner: By the Numbers,”
PhoenixMercury.​com
, April 15, 2013,
http://www.​wnba.​com/​mercury/​news/​griner_​numbers_​130415.​html
, accessed June 27, 2013.

breaking the girl's nose:
“Baylor's Griner Suspended 2 Games for Punch,” Associated Press, March 5, 2010.

Female college basketball players have an average vertical leap:
Jay Hoffman,
Norms for Fitness
,
Performance and Health
(Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2006), 61.

outjumped 95 percent of the women:
Brian Palmer, “Below the Rim: Why Are There So Few Dunks in Women's Basketball?” Slate, March 23, 2012.

takeoff force actually decreases:
T. E. Hewett et al., “Decrease in Neuromuscular Control About the Knee with Maturation in Female Athletes,”
Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery
, Vol. 86, No. 8 (Aug. 2004), 1601–8.

triceps contractions in cats:
E. Henneman et al., “Properties of Motor Units in a Homogeneous Red Muscle (Soleus) of the Cat,”
Journal of Neurophysiology
28 (1965), 71–85.

female muscle tissue:
Suzanne Meth, “Gender Differences in Muscle Morphology,” in
Women's Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation
, (Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers, 2001), ed. Nadya Swedan, 3–4. Also: K. J. Cureton et al., “Muscle Hypertrophy in Men and Women,”
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise
20 (1988), 338–44.

dunked 52 times in 32 games:
“Baylor's Griner Becomes 7th Woman to Dunk,” Associated Press, Nov. 25, 2009.

“Brittney does what Brittney does”:
Imani Stafford at press conference, Feb. 23, 2013.

“soft, mild, pitiful”:
Shakespeare,
Henry VI
,
Part III
, Act I, Scene 4, 140–41.

“someone's child”:
“Mulkey Bothered by Social Media Taunts of Griner,” Associated Press, April 2, 2012.

an “erotic dimension”:
David J. Leonard, “Not Entertained? Brittney Griner Continues to Challenge Expectations,” Slam Online, March 1, 2012.

“search my name on Twitter”:
“Mulkey Bothered by Social Media Taunts of Griner.”

“an unwritten law”:
“Griner: No Talking Sexuality at Baylor,”
ESPN.​com
, May 27, 2013.