This weekend, I came to grips with something that I probably should have accepted at least 15 years ago.
My dunking days are over and they are never coming back.
To be honest, it's probably a bit of an overstatement to say I ever had "dunking days". It's not as if I was going to the playground and throwing down monsters dunks on people in my youth. To be honest, I never dunked on anybody, and I never dunked in a competitive game. However, I did occasionally dunk on 10 foot regulation rims while practicing. Sure I was successful in only about one of every 100 dunk attempts, but in my, mind each one of those dunks was glorious, and was perfectly willing to make 100 or more attempts in an afternoon until I threw one down ( but I would never try in a game, because I wanted to win every game I played, and I wasn't about to pass up a 99% percent shot ( layup ) for a 1% chance at a dunk ).
So, I wasn't a great dunker; I wasn't a good dunker or even a fair dunker, but the fact that I was 6' 1" and could occasionally dunk filled me with pride, and gave a naturally unassertive kid like me a little bit of irrational confidence that helped me with many aspects of my life. I'm gonna be honest, - if I had never dunked in my life, and don't think I would have ever asked a girl out to this day.
In any case, because being a "dunker" was such an important part of my self image, that it was hard for me to accept the idea that dunking was no longer in the cards when I got older. Back in 2008 when I was 38, I found myself in gym with Michael waiting for his youth basketball class to start. I instinctively ran to the rim and tried to to grab it. On my first attempt, my fingers barely grazed the bottom of the rim, so I tried again and again until I started to touch the rim with the part of my hand where the base of finger meet the top of the palm. Michael's class started after that, so I didn't make anymore attempts, but I tried to convince myself that if I'd had the chance to warm up a little bit longer I would have eventually gotten my hand up to dunking level ( with my wrist touching the rim ).
Anyway, I could barely walk the next day, and I was limping around with a pulled groin in both legs for about a week after that.
As you might imaging, despite my best efforts to stay fit, my leaping ability has deteriorated quite a bit in the last 10 years. My leg strength really hasn't declined at all, but my flexibility ( which never good to begin with ) is terrible, and I feel absolutely no springiness in my legs. What worse, I now seem to have a fear of putting 100% effort into each leap, because feel like one of my tight muscle/tendons/ligaments is ready to snap at any second.
This all hit home yesterday when I was playing in the driveway with my kids with the rim set at 9-feet. I was able dunk a 9-foot rim will relative ease as recently as last year, but yesterday I found my dunk attempts being rejected by the front of the rim over an over again. Eventually, after about 20 semi-tentative attempts, I foolishly risked snapping a ligament, focused all my jumping power with a loud martial arts kiai, and barely manage to get a successful dunk on the 9-foot rim. So, I guess I had a small victory, but it was a pretty pathetic victory, considering it was now just as hard for me to dunk on a 9-foot rim as it had been for me to dunk on a 10-foot rim in my prime. I came to the realization that I had lost entire foot on my vertical leap since my youth.
Of course, I really shouldn't be complaining. I'm been blessed with better health than most people my age, and I still don't feel my age at all when I engage in activities like hiking, lifting weights, or running on my treadmill. Still it's a little bit scary to consider the implications of our inevitable physical decline. After all, no matter how hard we work to stay fit, we all slow down, we all start to lose our ability to do things, and eventually we all ...
You know what? Fuck it - let's not ever discuss this again. How about that Infinity War movie, guys!
Rich
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