Sweet Vindication
‘Mr. Johnson Gets Quiet’ (Gus Ruelas- AP)
All the talk about the draft lately has left me wanting to talk about something else. So I’d like to talk about a memory from my adolescence which was sparked by something I saw in the news last week.
Picture this: a room full of 7th graders in math class, fear streaked across their faces, some of them trembling, some of them frozen in terror. This was my experience everyday in homeroom for my first year in junior high school. The fear and terror was due to the intimidation of the dictator in front of the room. He made it his job to scare every single one of his students from the minute they walked into his classroom. He wasn’t there to be an educator, at least not at that point in his career. This was the same guy that dangled boys by their ankles over the balcony of the National Guard armory where we had some of our classes.
So anyway, one day he was telling all of us about the jobs that women would never do, including climbing poles for the electrical company and slam dunking basketballs; you know, math stuff. Well, he asked the class kind of rhetorically, how many of us had ever seen a woman dunk a basketball. It just so happened that I had seen a special story on a sports related program that highlighted a woman in college who had done the first recorded slam dunk in practice. Sorry I don’t remember her name. Being the Don Quixote that I was, I slowly raised my hand. I heard gasps around me, my fellow students wondering out loud if I had a death wish. The teacher said “why are you raising your hand?” I told him that I had, in fact seen a woman slam dunk a basketball. He didn’t believe me and said in front of the class that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
What sparked this lovely memory? Last week Candace Parker of the WNBA’s LA Sparks, dunked the ball twice in two different games. Her teammate Lisa Leslie has dunked during a game as well. Candace won a dunk contest in 2004.
Please forgive my digression from discussions of the Jazz and the NBA, but I just gotta say: “In your face Mr. Johnson, in your face.”
10 Comments to “Sweet Vindication”
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What’s the WNBA?
The WNBA is the Women’s National Basketball Association.
dunk-a-tronic candace parker has done it not once, but twice.
and both dunks looked better than “lil” Lisa Lesley’s - her’s banked in if i remember correctly…. don’t believe me? Youtube it.
haha, I know. I was being sarcastic. Meaning no one cares about the WNBA.
Jeffrey, there is no place for sarcasm when it comes to dunking.
remember: you can’t fake the funk on a nasty dunk!
Jeffrey, I gave you the courtesy of answering your question politely, even though I suspected your sarcasm. Some people care about the WNBA, if you’re not one of them it’s okay, but there’s no need to be what I’ll rephrase for the sake of censors; a smart-allek.
Hey, I quite enjoy the WNBA. To each their own as far as entertainment but I am sorry that Salt Lake wasn’t able to keep their team. I super respect what they can do!
when a woman gets a dunk in the NBA then ill care. Dunking against defense is much harder! I mean basketball defense not wNBA defense.
Jazzaddict, I think you missed the point of my post. Comparing the NBA to the WNBA is comparing apples to oranges.
Haha, you guys are funny. “you can’t fake the funk on a nasty dunk!” lol that’s awesome. And to Annie, the NBA is like comparing apples to oranges. You are 100% right on that one. But instead of writing a bunch of rude comments about the WNBA, I will just say, it’s awesome that there are at least 5 or 6 woman out there that support the league. All of which have probably read this post. And you have every right to enjoy the crap out of it! So good for you guys!
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