In Hope for the 2014 Season: The Dunk and a Cultural of Sure Things

Perhaps the most incredible sight of the late 1970s and early 1980s was the (re)turn to the slam dunk. Outlawed by white men fearful of a college-aged Kareem, who still holds the record for the best movie scene by an athlete, the slam dunk came back to prominence with Dr. J and Darryl “Chocolate Thunder” Dawkins. It was such a powerful, athletic, and artistic accomplishment that it literally entered our language as an idiom for a sure thing. A “slam dunk” wasn’t just for physically talented individuals after this era. Slam dunks were for businesses who landed a new client or, for younger kids, a good grade on a test. The “slam dunk” didn’t just change basketball. It changed the way we looked at success and produced a new category for the most successful victories, although certainly success in sports can’t be mapped directly to business models.

In the past three decades, we’ve grown accustomed to the superior ability of NBA athletes to dunk. While there are certainly cases of successful NBA players unable to dunk—the newly retired Steve Nash is the foremost example—dunking seems a prerequisite. But as we’ve grown accustomed to dunking (and the 3-pt shot, ahem Spurs, I’m looking at you), the culture of the dunk—of sure things—we’ve moved it into a culture of expecting. We expect Andrew Wiggins to dunk and expect Jabari Parker to be an all-star. We expect Joel Embiid to be great so long as his back holds up. We expect Marcus Smart to ball. We expect rookies to make great impacts on the NBA. We’re always looking for the next LeBron James, the next sure thing.  We expect.

But this season might be a little different. Derrick Rose, finally we say, comes back. No, really. He’s coming back and hopefully he stays. The experiment of the Cavaliers gets to be compared to the control group known as the Spurs. The Clippers are high-flying, fun, and could lose games 162-157 (it’s gotta happen against one of the awful teams in the east). Chris Bosh gets to show us what he can really do (although this looks a bit ridiculous). Will the NBA screw Memphis again? Is Russell Westbrook going to explode into a million little pieces of awesome? How bad will the Sixers be? I’m actually serious about that last one. It’s going to be as fun to watch them win a few games as it will be to watch any team beat them (in all their fiery glory). We get to watch Tim Duncan go for six rings.

So rather than expecting, we get to hope. There are no sure things (yes, the Spurs are there, but remember, they’ve never won two in a row). More importantly, as the NBA season begins again, we get to do what all sports fans get to do: avoid sure things. We all have to go to work in the morning and all of our social media apps update us instantly on life. Everything is a sure thing, even more so with our interconnectedness. That’s what makes sports different from everything else. It’s so unpredictable that it’s almost a modern opera (or maybe soap opera, but I dunno).

Sports are a herculean activity conducted, often errantly, by men who might have once been called Titans. Each season, we get to watch them joust and sit in awe. We follow their lives because, in part, they make everything that’s a sure thing seem unpredictable. They rip us from the grind. And NBA players do with majestic slam dunks.