The history of the slam dunk: from outlawed move to beloved highlight

I t seems impossible to believe, but there was a time when basketball largely forbade the dunk. From 1967 to 1976, high school and college players were outlawed from slamming the ball through the rim. Instead, they would have to lay the ball up or simply drop it through the hoop as they soared through the air. Now, as we look forward to this weekend’s NBA Slam Dunk Contest, the ban seems silly, especially when considering the eye-popping highlights created by the likes of Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, Shawn Kemp and Vince Carter.

But such was the state of things a half-century ago. In an era when the game was changing rapidly, when players like the 7ft 2in Kareem-Abdul Jabbar were dominating instead of the shorter, more ground-bond hoopers like Bob Cousy, the dunk was seen as taboo among “purists,” against the very nature of basketball itself. Though that perspective wasn’t shared by many of the players.

“It didn’t make sense,” says Terry Tyler, a former Pistons double-digit scorer, who played for the University of Detroit under coach Dick Vitale when the dunk was banned by the NCAA. Tyler later participated in one of the first-ever NBA dunk contests in 1986 (won by the diminutive 5ft 7in guard, Spud Webb, over teammate Wilkins).

“The people who made that decision probably never played basketball before,” he says. “In their minds, it wasn’t fair. But this is something to this day that goes on in sports – people make the wrong decisions.”

Tyler says he first dunked a basketball when he was 13. He hadn’t started playing organized hoops in high school yet, but when he stuffed the ball through the basket, he almost couldn’t believe what he’d done. “It was a great feeling,” he says.

It’s believed that the first-ever