No one paid much attention to Spud Webb at the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk competition. At 5′7″, he was (and remains) the shortest player ever to compete in the contest. The rest of the field dwarfed him by over a foot. Even Dominique Wilkins, Webb’s teammate and the reigning slam-dunk champion, brushed Spud aside. “I don’t think he’s ever seen me dunk before,” Webb said in a pregame interview. Then he did the following:
An elevator two-handed double-pump dunk, a one-handed off-the-backboard jam, a 360-degree helicopter one-handed dunk, a 180-degree reverse double-pump slam and a 180-degree reverse two-handed strawberry jam from a lob bounce off the floor, the latter two of which received perfect 50-point scores in the final round to bring home the gold.
We have no control over how tall we stand—height is fixed from the start. How we stand, though (or soar, in Mr. Webb’s case) is measured in stature. And stature knows no bounds. With that in mind, we proudly present:
