My lone dunk

When I was in my late teens, a bunch of us decided to play a game of pickup basketball at the old elementary school. The basket was a few inches short of a regulation 10 feet.

I was playing on a team with a guy named Ricky. He'd played varsity basketball and was easily the best player on this team. He also was well-known for shooting finger rolls.

When he drove to the basket, for some reason, I followed. He did his finger roll, and the ball went DING! off the front of the rim. For a fraction of a second, it hung in front of the basket.

I swooped in, grabbed the ball with two hands and slammed it gently. It was my only dunk in a game, ever. (I did, however, dunk playing HORSE or just fooling around, but that's a different story.)

No one seemed impressed with the dunk; I don't know if anyone ever mentioned it. It was impressive to me, though; I was six feet tall and about 280 pounds, after all.

 I remember it, nearly 50 years later. Boy, it felt good.

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EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  BLUESKY: PROFILE

MORE BLOG ENTRIES BY TOM GILLISPIE

• Resume for a writer and editor

• An editor's views on powerful writing

• Advice for be and would-be novelists

• Links to TG's stories online

• Favorite quotes

• What I do when I'm editing

ANECDOTES BY TOM GILLISPIE

• Wipeout at Death Valley

• Days with rainbows

• A desperate writer working in the dark

• Yer OUTTA there!

EDITOR@WORK BLOG ENTRIES

• You really DO need an editor

• Reminders for would-be novelists

• What I do when I'm editing

• What I charge (it's a deal) and what I edit

• Slogging through the Internet

• J-school: More eyes on your stories

• J-school: Go out and learn

• Rookie mistakes for magazine writers

ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG

• Katie cried

• Growl and pull

• 13-plus years with my dog Lady

• ... said the spider to ...

• The Dog Diary (2014)

• YIP! YIP! The stereo-sound huskies

• What Lady and Michael Jackson had in common

BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL

• Angel in Black: Remembering Dale Earnhardt Sr.

(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)

• Then Junior Said to Jeff...

(the book of great NASCAR stories)

• My best day as a sports writer

• Jeff Gordon's milk toast to Dale Earnhardt

• Wayne Auton: A life in racing

A MISSED SLAM DUNK

Tom Gillispie's resume

In the winter of 1983-84, I was covering high school basketball for a small daily newspaper in the mountains of North Carolina, and I was sent to cover a game at Edneyville High School. I was warned that they had a 6-foot-6 white player who was the best Class 1-A player in the state. Yeah, sure. Big deal.

So I was kneeling under the basket when this phenom stole the ball. He headed downcourt, and I was ready with my handy-dandy camera. He took off a foot inside the foul line, offered the ball underhanded to the basket, pulled it back, brought it around and did a rollicking one-handed slam. I knelt there, slack-jawed. Didn't take the picture. Didn't even think of taking the picture.

A few weeks later, I was more accustomed to this player and what he could do, and I was sitting on the other end of the court. I had my notepad beside me (I was keeping the game to write it up later) and my camera on my lap. Big Man On Campus dribbled the baseline to my left, and a Tryon player stuck out his hip to force the high-flying star out of bounds. He leaped around the guy, reached back inbounds and floated the ball into the basket.

I didn't have time to look through the viewfinder, so I just fired from the hip. When the photos were developed, I got a panoramic shot of BMOC flying around and above a shocked Tryon player, with the ball sailing toward the basket. You could see other players, at least one ref and a bunch of fans looking on in disbelief. It was sharp and a great story-teller.

Couldn't have done better if I'd planned it.

Ironically, the sports editor at first didn't want to use that photo, since we'd run so MANY pictures of that player. But, in the end, we did run it.

I never took a better picture for him (or maybe for anyone else, either).

><

EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  BLUESKY: PROFILE

MORE BLOG ENTRIES BY TOM GILLISPIE

• Resume for a writer and editor

• An editor's views on powerful writing

• Advice for be and would-be novelists

• Links to TG's stories online

• Favorite quotes

• What I do when I'm editing

ANECDOTES BY TOM GILLISPIE

• Wipeout at Death Valley

• Days with rainbows

• A desperate writer working in the dark

• Yer OUTTA there!

EDITOR@WORK BLOG ENTRIES

• You really DO need an editor

• Reminders for would-be novelists

• What I do when I'm editing

• What I charge (it's a deal) and what I edit

• Slogging through the Internet

• J-school: More eyes on your stories

• J-school: Go out and learn

• Rookie mistakes for magazine writers

ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG

• Katie cried

• Growl and pull

• 13-plus years with my dog Lady

• ... said the spider to ...

• The Dog Diary (2014)

• YIP! YIP! The stereo-sound huskies

• What Lady and Michael Jackson had in common

BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL

• Angel in Black: Remembering Dale Earnhardt Sr.

(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)

• Then Junior Said to Jeff...

(the book of great NASCAR stories)

• My best day as a sports writer

• Jeff Gordon's milk toast to Dale Earnhardt

• Wayne Auton: A life in racing