What’s the best in-game dunk in the history of the mid South?
That’s not the exact question I addressed in my most recent Sporting Life Arkansas piece, but it’s one I’ve been pondering all day. We know Memphis has produced some seriously athletic prep and college ballers – Adonis Thomas, Anfernee Hardway, Derrick Rose and even Amare Stoudemire (who briefly attended a Memphis high school and would have attended the U of Memphis had he not jumped to the NBA) jump to mind.
As a high schooler, Shaquille O’Neal assaulted numerous rims in San Antonio before doing his thing at LSU. And Blake Griffin practiced his aerial arts in Oklahoma before landing in Los Angeles.
In the mid-South’s NBA landscape, we have elite dunkers like Memphis’ Rudy Gay and Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook.
But I don’t think ANY of the above players – while living in the mid South – have ever unleashed something as mind-boggling as what an Arkansas high schooler did last Monday. Compared to what you’re about to see from this Nettleton High sophomore, Clyde Drexler’s most vicious dunk looks like Mother Teresa tending a sick lamb.
If you haven’t already seen it on one of 2,000 other blogs, here and here are the best two angles of Victor Duke’s magnum oh!-phlush.
As I mention in the SLA piece, I think this may end up being the dunk of the year – anywhere, any level. And if anybody has done something more spectacular in the mid South, please for the love of Phi Slamma Jamma send it my way. I have to see it.
One SLA reader said an ASU player once pulled off a better dunk back in the early ’90s; I pray in the name of Chocolate Thunder video of it can be found.
