Yes, I got dunked on, and it sucked...

So, we were talking at the bar after our kickball loss on a number of topics: the merits of "SuperBad" (absolutely amazing...unedited clip, btw), whether this weekend UW frosh QB Jake Locker could treat USC like he treated Syracuse (no), Jessica Alba vs. Scarlett Johansson (Alba, but that's like having 1st choice in a pickup game and taking Kobe over LeBron: they're both pretty nice). But a discussion arose as to what each person's most embarrassing athletic moment ever was, and I felt like I had a capper to end all debate, and I was pretty much right. It was the one-and may I emphasize only-time I got dunked on.

When I was in 9^th grade, I joined an AAU team out of Seattle called the C.A.Y.A. Stars, which at the time was one of the top programs in the nation. With Jason Terry running the point and a bunch of other cats that went on to some small D-1’s and D-II’s, we were loaded. I was the only kid on the team not from the city (Everett is about 30 miles north of Seattle), but at 6’0”, I had pretty decent hops and could play some solid defense, so I had probably made the team on the “hustle” factor.

Anyways, one of my first tournaments with the team was a qualifying tournament for AAU Nationals, and in an early pool play game we went up against a squad of other Seattle kids that was throw-together team called the Miller All-Stars. In warm-ups guys kept talking about this guy named Trevon Hubbard (who was about 6’2”, and ended up in and out of colleges like Fresno State) and that even though we would smack their team, he would probably drop around 40 and get at least one ridiculous bang on somebody. I could tell his hops were pretty crazy, but I got this notion that if he tried to go up on me during the game, I’d get mine.

Fast forward the third quarter. Sure enough, we’re up by about 30, but Trevon has scored about 35 of his team’s points, and had a couple of pretty nice fast break dunks. I had 2 points and maybe 3 or 4 turnovers at this point, so even though we had the lead, personally I wasn’t exactly dripping in confidence. Anyhow, I received an inbounds pass under our basket after Miller had made a bucket, and made what had to have been the worst attempted pass ever on record to JT around mid-court. Trevon intercepted it and wouldn’t you know it, the only thing between him and his path to the rim is a scrawny 6’0” white kid from Suburbia.

While he began to gather his steps for takeoff, I decided that for better or worse, I was gonna challenge him. He ended up jumping off two feet from the dotted, and I couldn’t have timed it any better…we were going to clash. I got about half of my forearm over the rim, but unfortunately for me, after he had cocked it back to his numbers with one hand, he was about eye level with the rim, and just s#&* on me something terrible I'd never seen before. It was basically like this, except my face was between him and the basket. It really, really sucked.

Of course, absolute chaos ensued, with many people mobbing the court like the Vince dunk in that Rucker game from a few years back. I was one of about 3 white guys in the gym, so you know that as a 14 year old from the suburbs trying to prove I belonged on the team, I was traumatized and in absolute shock. I played the rest of the game in a Darko-like haze (accompanied by a hefty bruise under my left eye, courtesy of ball via Travon’s force), and on the drive home after the game, I cried like a newborn child for a solid 15 minutes. Humbling to say the least, and to this day, if I see someone going up to get theirs, I simply move to the side and run down to play offense. I'm not about to end up like poor Fredric Weis: