"Slammed"
Sports Illustrated: Women
December/January 2002

Small hands. No confidence. Slavish devotion to team mentality. When it comes to the most controversial maneuver in women's basketball, everyone has an opinion, but the unspoken message is the same: nice girls don't dunk.

CONSIDER THE DUNK. It's one of the most poetic and satisfying moments in all sport, a phenomenon so ubiquitous it's known, as snow is to Eskimos, by many names: the tamahawk, the alley-oop, the two-handed throwdown. It's not only the dunker's gymnastic magic we adore; it's also the dunked-upon we ogle in those postgame photographs. There's nothing quite like the stunned face of a basketball player who's been outrun, outjumped or simply faked out of his shorts by a tongue-wagging, ball-slamming showboat.

Never mind that a simple layup off the glass would score the same two points. The dunk is the drama of dominance, the basketball equivalent of chest-beating. Given how it thrills us so, it's no wonder people ask, Why don't women dunk?

Don't answer too quickly, unless you're wiling to chance being predictable. Men tend to head straight for Can't Jump Avenue, or at least visit the neighborhood. Women usually take a stroll down No Role Model Street before meandering down Purity of the Women's Game Lane.

The fact is while a number of women slam in practice and warm-ups, WNBA games remain notoriously dunk-free. Perhaps the most famous pro dunk is the one that wasn't, when Lisa Leslie of the L.A. Sparks attempted to bury it in the WNBA's inaugural game in 1997, and missed and didn't try again. Sylvia Crawley won the 1998 American Basketball League All-Star Game Slam Dunk contest by slamming blindfolded, but we haven't seem a game dunk from her since she joined the Portland Fire in 2000.

The women's NCAA has had a handful of sightings. As a junior last season, Michelle Snow of the University of Tennessee slammed it twice, but the event is so rare you have to go back to 1994 to find another one, when Charlotte Smith dunked while playing for North Carolina.

Remarkably, Smith is only six feet tall, four to five inches shorter than Leslie, Crawley, or Snow. She now plays for the Charlotte Sting... no dunks. The first woman to slam was Georgeann Wells of West Virginia University, who did it twice in the 1984-85 season.

Five dunks in 17 years. You're more likely to see the elusive perfect game in Major League Baseball.

Some WNBA fans and sportswriters watch for dunks with a salivating anticipation that's beyond the comprehension of the purists who prefer the women's game just the way it is. After Snow's slams the salivating turned to drooling, especially during this year's All-Star Game. According to the pregame buzz, there were players who could dunk – Leslie, Lauren Jackson (Seattle Storm), and Tari Phillips (New York Liberty) – but would they? They didn't.

Why not? Well, because women focus on fundamentals and teamwork, and they know that practicing the dunk is about as good a use of time as learning to spin the ball on their fingers. Women aren't as spotlight hungry, and, what's more, that's a good thing. That's what the Purity of the Women's Game folks say, anyway, and I think I know a thing or two about that.

When I was growing up, my family had a hoop in the driveway, and I was usually the only girl playing two-on-two or three-on-three games with my adolescent brother and his friends. From time to time, they would lower the goal so they could dunk, and when they did, the games I liked so much were temporarily suspended. Coaches and ambitious fathers would frown on their waste of practice time, but the boys would do it anyway, becoming five-foot-five Michael Jordans and driving the lane for the game-winning slam as the clock ran out over and over again and the crowd went wild.

I was as tall as they were. I loved to play and win as much as they did. But I never slammed with them. I'm not exactly sure why, but it had something to do with the reality that I was never going to hit six-foot-four. The boys were fueled by the idea that they might, someday, dunk it on a 10-foot hoop. Maybe they were being imaginative, but I would have been delusional to think I would ever do it.

In my world, which was a Southern one, girls were complimented for being feminine, which meant keeping their hair brushed and wearing perfume and taking care of other people. It also meant being physically small. Older lady relatives who hadn't seen you in a while would greet you with a line that went something like, "Honey, you're getting so pretty. Do you have a boyfriend? Oh, I hope you don't get any taller."

For whatever reason, I was not so prissy that I stayed inside doing my nails all day, and not so studly that I wanted to dunk a basketball. A beautiful pass, yes; an elegant jump shot, absolutely. But the slam? No. I was a girl among the boys, and I wanted everyone to remember it.

I remember seeing the Liberty's Rebecca Lobo on television several years ago, when her face was on WNBA Barbie boxes, and she was on top of the world. She was being interviewed on a nighttime talk show, Leno, I think. He asked her if she had anyone special, and she seemed to crumble a little, talking about how hard it is to find it somebody tall enough.

Powerful women who make it their business to sweat know full well the reality of how many men would rather date Barbie than them. We're so approving of Lisa Leslie's model-perfect smiles and of how nice and accommodating Lobo is to fans.

Dunking is not about composure or being nice, but then again, neither is rebounding. In pickup games in my neighborhood, I'll spontaneously go for an aggressive, tap-into-the-soul kind of teardown. I yell and shake sweat like a wet dog. Nothing could be less girlie. But a rebound is getting possession of the ball; it's not a move of pure showmanship like the dunk. Chalk one up for the purity of the game.
 
WHY DON'T WOMEN DUNK? I open the discussion with Houston Comets coach Van Chancellor by throwing him a lob, asking him about solid ball playing, about teamwork and fundamentals. Between eating breakfast and cracking jokes in his thick Mississippi accent, the coach who holds four of the WNBA's five championship trophies summarizes the issue in two words: "Small hands."

If you can't grip the ball easily with one hand, you have to use two hands to dunk, which means you have to jump even higher. All the physical elements – hand size, height, jumping ability, speed, timing, strength – are related. Subtract any one and another has to compensate. Which means that of those few women who can pull off a slam in a shooting contest or warmup, fewer still can do it at full speed while being guarded. The women who have dunked, with the exception of Smith, have all been at least six-foot-four. That's guard size in the NBA, center size in the WNBA. Women also need a running start; they're not dunking from a standing position in the lane. Guards usually lead the fast break, and in the women's game, most guards are under, if not well under, six feet tall. Dunking is generally limited to those situations that find a center in open court.

Still, five dunks in 17 years?

Trudy Lacey, assistant coach of the Charlotte Sting, attributes it in part to self-consciousness. "There's a risk to doing something out of the ordinary, overcoming the fear of missed dunks and embarrassing moments," she says. "Women's confidence levels just aren't there yet."

Tennessee coach Pat Summitt agrees that dunking takes "confidence and opportunity," and Snow found herself twice last season with adequate reserves of both. At the Maui Invitational exhibition game in November 2000 Snow got a steal at the top of the key and headed straight for the goal. In a game against Vanderbilt two months later, Summitt called a play that found Snow receiving a long pass with 7.3 seconds on the clock and Tennessee up by seven points. Both times there was no one between her and the basket. Confidence, opportunity.

While Summitt emphasizes that there were "more people excited than critical" about the infamous dunks, she did receive some grief, especially in Nashville, for calling the play that created Snow's breakaway against Vanderbilt. "Some people thought it was poor sportsmanship," says Summit, "while in the men's game, if you have two guys going down that don't match up, they'll dunk it nine out of 10 times. In both situations there was some criticism. People just aren't accustomed to seeing women dunk."

Resentment Avenue. Among women's sports, basketball seems to have a singular capacity to piss people off. Nowhere is this more aptly demonstrated than at a dark and scary place called rantandraves.com. Here, discussions on all subjects are initiated by provocative questions such as, "What's with all the immigrants?" From there other ranters and ravers join in, responding to each other's postings and congratulating each other on effective dissing in the manner of a virtual Jerry Springer Show.

Among the many sports-related tirades on rantsandrves.com are a handful devoted to basketball, such as, "Bob Knight got screwed!" and "Should Michael Jordan come back again?!" And "The WNBA is a joke!"

The way the WNBA plays, the way the players look while playing or not playing, the way the league advertises itself... everything is fair game, to the point that the seven pages of rants directed at women's basketball begins to remind me of one of those public service announcements designed to educate people about child abuse. You can almost hear an alcoholic, chain-smoking mother screaming in the background as you watch a haunted child stare into space, a solitary tear screaming down her cheek. "No personality... no flair... look ridiculous.... can't play... can't even dunk... can't even dunk... can't even..."

There are no rants about women's tennis, women's soccer, women's volleyball, women's anysport. Only the WNBA seems to attract such venom.

Opposite the ranters are the WNBA's staunchest fans, many of whom don't know a zone defense from a double dribble, God love 'em. The feminists and dads-with-daughters and public figures who come to the games to support more than watch, the type of people who incite the ranters as much as the players themselves do.

THE WNBA IS WATCHED INTENSELY by those who are satisfied with seeing women given an opportunity but not seizing it, and by those who resent women entering man territory while not wearing cute little skirts.

Even as Snow hung on the rim and brought the house down, there were those who criticized her for the unabashed look-at-me antics we adore in our men. The word classless seems to ring in Snow's head; it's a harsh bit of sexism she has denounced regularly in interviews when she has been forced to defend the dunks. Vanderbilt coach Jim Foster refused even to comment on the dunk after the game, but one thing's for sure: Swinging from that rim in a most unladylike pose, legs bent and spread, face distorted with triumph, Snow gave women something to think about the next time they run across a lowered goal.

To understand what sets Snow apart from those who can but don't, you need to know about Midnight Madness practice her freshman year at Tennessee. She missed he first dunk in front of a crowd of 20,000 Volunteer fans. And she missed her second dunk. And her third. "How many times did you miss?" I ask her. "Four or five," she recalls, laughing a little. "I just kept bricking, but I didn't stop." She missed every dunk that night, and the crowd, she says, cheered for her to keep trying. The next year, at her sophomore Midnight Madness, she slammed it home the first time she tried.

Snow says that while she was growing up, the boys on the playground always tried to get her to dunk. "I was six-four, and they'd say, 'We know you can dunk it!' They wouldn't let me settle for 'girls can't jump.'" When Snow left for Tennessee, those neighborhood boys were replaced by fellow Tennessee payers Vince Yarbrough and Ron Slay, who worked with her to help her slam.

Yarbrough plays down the influence. "She didn't need much work," he says. "She always had the height and the jump. We just showed her how to hold the ball when she went up."

When I ask her if she'll try to dunk this year, Snow says she is "sure the opportunity will present itself." It's also a safe bet she'll take that opportunity. During the Tennessee Hoopalooza scrimmage games this fall, Yarbrough says the crowd chanted, "We want Snow... we want Snow... we want Snow..." until she obliged them with a successful slam on her second try.
 
WOMEN'S BASKETBALL IS CHANGING, with bigger, better-trained players equipped with ever-increasing numbers of role models. Even Summitt, who calls dunking "the most over-rated offensive play in the game," admits that it is undeniably a thrill to watch. "The dunk creates excitement, and even if it create controversy, that's not all bad," she says. With the WNBA's average attendance at an alltime low and with only 1.1% of U.S. households as its television viewership, the pros could surely stand a little extra excitement.

Still, a crowd-pleasing stunt is just that without the fundamental game to back it up. Chancellor, with little prodding, adds to his theory of the small hands. "If you're gonna like us, it's for precision, team play...and if you don't appreciate that, you're not gonna appreciate us."

There are purists who remember fondly those days of the early '70s when dunking was a novelty for men, unheard of for women. High school girls played six-on-six half-court basketball then, being too "delicate" for the rigors of the full court. Men and women bring vastly different games to their 10-foot-tall opponents, and when it comes to dunking, the gender gap will never close completely. But we can look for Snow to unleash her slam again this year and carry it on to the WNBA. It seems unlikely that the pros won't follow her into the spotlight, delivering a message to all of the would-be young dunkers out there: Be yourself; we'll love you for it.