Big Moments You Should’ve Seen Live: The Dunk (1993)
*This is a guest blog written by Dan Fogarty of Get a Job Dan!
Often overlooked in the pantheon of greatest New York sports plays, “The Dunk” was the best thing that happened in 1993. In the playoffs of that year a young and rough Knicks team, led by Black Irishman and slicked-back-hair hall of famer Pat Riley, sought to finally slay The Beast Known As Michael Jordan.
Here’s how the play went: Late in the fourth quarter of Game 2 with the Knicks nursing a three point lead John Starks grabbed a rebound. He brought the ball upcourt, eventually finding himself in the right corner being guarded closely by BJ Armstrong. Patrick Chewing himself comes up to set a screen, no doubt whispering into Armstrong’s ear, “that he better eat his Snickers.” Starks fakes left as if he were going to use the pick and blows by a terrified and bewildered Armstrong. As he drives baseline, and the entire Bulls team comes to help, you get the feeling that something is about to go down.
What went down was a moment you should’ve seen live, but you if you didn’t, the Youtube clip can provide you with 1/1,000th the electricity that was running through the Garden at that point. There are a number of reasons why “The Dunk” is so great. In no particular order:
1. It was late in a big-game situation. Something that would have been impressive enough during the regular season came during crunch time, in the playoffs no less.
2. The reaction from the crowd. When Starks first dunks the ball everybody in the Garden loses their minds. But it’s not your normal reaction to, say, a game-winning three pointer, big foul shot, or huge dunk. Where in those situations the crowd has time to prepare between the shot itself and the making of said shot, this happens way too quickly for any type of normal response. What results is 20,000 New Yorkers collectively going insane over something they had no time to mentally prepare for.
3. The delayed reaction from Marv. Marv Albert, one of the greatest commentators of our generation, tries to keep it cool at first. But notice he goes an octave higher once he has time to digest what just happened because he realizes people will be talking about this play for awhile.
4. Posterizing MJ…and Horace Grant. To be fair, Jordan got over too late to have a serious chance at altering the play. Bespeckaled nerd Horace Grant takes the brunt of the assault. But Jordan is there where it counts: on the poster. After years of dunking on robotic white guys and timid defenders, Jordan finally learned what it feels like to be Chris Dudley.
5. Patrick Chewing and the rest of the Knicks engage Starks in some classic chest bumping. After the play, once the zen master Phil Jackson calls a timeout so his team can sip green tea and meditate on the world class sonning they just recieved, John Starks gets the royal treatment from his teammates. In 2009 everybody does the old “jump up and crash into each other in mid-air” routine popularized by college wide receivers. But in 1993 the chest bump was the way to bro out on the court and on the field. It’s on full display here as Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley congratulate their teammate by nearly knocking him over.
6. He did it with his left hand.
Although the Knicks go on to lose the series and Starks himself laid quite the egg next year in Game 7 of the Finals, we’re gonna go ahead and forget about that (and leave it for a future post called “Worst Moments of My Life: the time John Starks screwed the pooch”). For now, “The Dunk” remains one of the greatest plays in Madison Square Garden history.
