Sunday, July 26, 2009

Remembering Reign Man

Via Ave and apropos of the thorougly underwhelming LeBron dunk tape, Sports Illustrated submits its summer list of 10 memorable bangers.

And there's not much to quibble with there. Any respectable list should include Vince Carter in the '00 Olympics over 7-foot-2 Frederic Weis (for my money, the best in-game dunk ever); B-Diddy over AK-47; and T-Mac with a dunk that essentially ended Shawn Bradley's career.

But somehow, someway, homage must be paid to the most vicious dunker of my lifetime: Shawn Kemp.

Were it not for struggles with cocaine, condom use and carbs, no doubt we'd be talking about the Reign Man as one of the best power forwards in league history:



Goodness knows, if Kemp ever had his head on straight, no way my beloved Rockets would have won two straight titles in the mid-90s. I hate admitting that.

3 comments:

Jack T. said...

The Manchild indeed. Now he's the poster boy for what can go wrong in an NBA career. I was a young cat when a lot of his troubles started and even I thought "Damn, player...you can't stop to strap on a rubber?"

Unknown said...

yeah, i was slippin, not havin kemp on there. he's his own top 10 list. that dude was absurd, in multiple ways.

blackink said...

@Jack: I mean, that brother could not be stopped. On or off the court. It's hard to believe he has a college-aged son already. Or not.

@Ave: Ay, it's easy to forget about Kemp. I mean, he came along during the Jordan era, never won a title and really disappeared after the Sonics' NBA Finals appearance.

But that dude ... damn shame. I hope Amare is taking notes.