Vince Carter and the Slam Dunk’s Day of Reckoning

To dunk is to tempt fate. It is a combustible mixture of elements inclined toward destruction: a high rate of speed, a defiance of physical laws, the unrestrained ego. It is ephemeral—you go up, you come right back down—yet over that brief flight time, an eternity spawns in a second. Through this natural transcendence, dunks have a way of living forever.

The dunk has persevered since it came alive during the height of the civil-rights movement. There were dunks before then, of course, but the shifting social subtext of the ’60s loaned the act a political relevancy. In 1967, the UCLA Bruins’ starting center, a 19-year-old sophomore from New York City named Lew Alcindor, led them to a 30–0 record and a national championship. But the year before, the championship game had pitted Texas Western College (an all-black starting lineup) against the University of Kentucky (an all-white team). Early