November 13, 1979: The Kansas City Kings beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 110-103 at the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium. (Their usual home, the Kemper Arena, now known as the Hy-Vee Arena, was under repairs, due to the roof collapsing in June.) Phil Ford of the Kings led all players with 34 points.
But the Sixers produce a highlight: Darryl Dawkins, the man claiming to be from the planet Lovetron, scores a dunk so hard it breaks the glass backboard.
No one is injured by the falling glass. Fortunately, the Kings player guarding him ducked, so the glass only fell on his back. His name was Bill Robinzine, and Dawkins, nicknamed Chocolate Thunder by singer Stevie Wonder, named the dunk, "The Chocolate-Thunder-Flying, Robinzine-Crying, Teeth-Shaking, Glass-Breaking, Rump-Roasting, Bun-Toasting, Wham-Bam, Glass-Breaker-I-Am-Jam." He also invented the dunking term, "In-Your-Face Disgrace." And, while Dawkins didn't come up with this one himself, thereafter, any player looking bad during an opposing player's highlight, something worthy of being put on a poster, was said to have gotten "posterized."
Dawkins was not the 1st man to break a backboard in the NBA. During pregame warmups for one of the first games ever played by the Boston Celtics in 1946, Chuck Connors -- who also played baseball and became much more famous as an actor -- accidentally broke a wooden backboard with a warmup shot, forcing a delay in the tipoff, as a backboard was brought in from another arena in town.
Gus Johnson of the Baltimore Bullets, one of the NBA's earliest dunk artists, supposedly broke 3 in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which would make him the 1st to do it with a dunk in a game, but no film footage is known to survive.
Gus Johnson of the Baltimore Bullets, one of the NBA's earliest dunk artists, supposedly broke 3 in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which would make him the 1st to do it with a dunk in a game, but no film footage is known to survive.
A native of Orlando, Florida, Dawkins was the 1st player to go directly from high school to the NBA, the ABA having beaten them to it with Moses Malone. He broke a 2nd backboard just a few weeks later, on December 5, 1979, this time pulling the rim down, too.
He helped the 76ers reach the NBA Finals in 1977, 1980 and 1982, but he was traded to the New Jersey Nets, and they brought Malone in, and he led the Sixers to a title in 1983 without Dawkins.
Dawkins, like baseball great Satchel Paige naming his vast array of pitches, started naming his dunks, including the Rim Wrecker, the Spine-Chiller Supreme, and, creating an expression that became a description for big dunks in general, the In-Your-Face Disgrace.
He also gained nicknames for himself. Added to "Chocolate Thunder" were "Sir Slam" and "Doctor Dunkenstein." That last one, however, would become better remembered for Utah Jazz star Darrell Griffith.
Like the aforementioned Paige, his baseball contemporary Dizzy Dean, and Dawkins' own contemporary, football quarterback Terry Bradshaw, Dawkins figured out that if you've got a certain image, use it to your advantage before others can use it to theirs. Possibly inspired by the man known as Doctor Funkenstein, rock bandleader George Clinton and his "P-Funk Empire," with his "Mothership Connection" stage set, Dawkins began telling people he was from the planet Lovetron, where he had a girlfriend named Juicy Lucy, and practiced "interplanetary funkmanship."
(As far as I know, he never explained what "interplanetary funkmanship" meant. I would have liked to have found out. Clinton and James Brown were probably mad that they didn't think of it first.)
He played 14 seasons in the NBA, mostly for the Sixers and the New Jersey Nets, and won a title in his last season, as a backup with the 1989 Detroit Pistons. He played a season with the Harlem Globetrotters, played a few seasons in Europe, and retired in 2000, going into coaching.
By that point, dunking became not the province of enormous centers -- despite the backboard-wrecking actions of Shaquille O'Neal -- but quick guards like Michael Jordan and Vince Carter, and forwards like Dominique "the Human Highlight Reel" Wilkins.
But the legend of Darryl Dawkins never faded away, not even after he died of a heart attack in 2015, only 58 years old. Bill Robinzine wasn't even that lucky: In 1982, only 29 years old, still an active player, he took his own life.
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November 13, 1979 was a Tuesday. There were 7 other games in the NBA that night:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Washington Bullets, 111-107 at Madison Square Garden.
* The New Jersey Nets beat the Atlanta Hawks, 101-82 at the Rutgers Athletic Center (now the Jersey Mike's Arena) in Piscataway. Calvin Natt scored 33 points for the Nets.
* The Houston Rockets beat the Chicago Bulls, 128-127 at the Chicago Stadium. The aforementioned Moses Malone scored 45 for the Rockets.
* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Golden State Warriors, 131-127 in overtime at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio. George Gervin led all scorers on the night with 47.
* The Denver Nuggets beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 116-110 at the McNichols Arena in Denver.
* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the San Diego Clippers, 137-91 at the San Diego Sports Arena (now the Pechanga Arena).
* And the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 101-92 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum. Marques Johnson scored 34.
Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 5 games in the NHL:
* The New York Islanders beat their arch-rivals, the New York Rangers, 10-5 at the Nassau Coliseum. Denis Potvin, Bryan Trottier and Billy Harris each had 2 goals. The Rangers had reached the Stanley Cup Finals the season before, beating the Isles in the Semifinals, but, this season, the Isles went on to win the whole thing, start a dynasty, and take over New York Tri-State Area hockey -- for a few years, anyway.
* The Edmonton Oilers beat the Washington Capitals, 5-3 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.
* The Vancouver Canucks beat the Atlanta Flames, 5-3 at The Omni in Atlanta.
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the St. Louis Blues, 5-2 at the St. Louis Arena, then known as the Checkerdome.
* And the Los Angeles Kings beat the Colorado Rockies, 4-1 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.
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