NBA Dunk of the Week: Ben Simmons and the Virtue of Banging on Suckers

Before I get to this week’s dunk, a wonderful slammer from Ben Simmons that left Avery Bradley sprawled out on the hardwood, I wanna write about a legendary dunk from the past: Shaquille O’Neal blitzing Chris Dudley. Don't worry, this will all make sense when it's over.

If you’re not familiar with the dunk, it is, quite simply, the best and most Shaq–esque dunk of Shaq’s extremely Shaq career: simplicity and brutality all in several wonderful, life-affirming seconds.

Shaq gets the ball in the post against Dudz, who is, uh, lighter than Shaq. Shaq makes three dribbles in the post, heaves his back into him, turns around—almost as if Dudley isn’t even there—rises up with his legs splayed as far as possible, practically thrusting his crotch into Dudley, and slams down so heavily you can hear the rim aching. Dudley, trying not to fall or something, finds his arms wrapped around Shaq, who is exhibiting absolutely no respect for Dudley. Shaq then winds back and throws him to the ground with a two-handed shove before jogging back on defense. The refs appear to have, like, completely missed that Dudley was not, in fact, harmlessly taken down by the pure momentum of the play, but rather an action of pure malice.

Dudley stands up, more thoroughly owned than he has been in his life (up to that point), picks up the ball, and hucks it at Shaq with an optimally pissy look on his face. It’s incredible. You think about being dunked on as being humiliating, but most dudes seem to, at least for the most part, take it in stride, accept that it’s part of the game. But getting dunked on, and then getting sprawled by the NBA’s all-time greatest schoolyard bully? It’s such an open and active stripping of your opponent’s honor, the only natural response is to stand up and pitifully try to reclaim a shred of dignity by doing something even more embarrassing. It is, truly, one of the great, perfect moments in the history of the NBA.

When I see Shaq throw that seven-foot string bean on the ground, my spirit becomes one with the big man’s. I find joy and glee and release in his success and in his extra dickhead flourish, as Dudley, all angles and bones, collapses on the baseline. In that moment I become, for one second, not a hermit blogger but the hand of Shaq itself. Dudley's embarrassment at the hands of the Big Cactus gives me a little piece of that power, inspiration in the moment.

But as I get older and, as Dudley before me, I become a middle-aged Pacific Northwesterner with acute (albeit wildly divergent) political opinions, I live in fear. I fear that someday I will not ever again feel the joy I feel when I see a sucker take on more than he can handle, and get banged on. I worry that where once stood cheerful malice, in watching someone’s day get fucking ruined by Shaq, there will be only pity, understanding, empathy. I feel the encroaching softness possessing me. I fear it.

Take, for instance, the above. Avery Bradley is on my personal short list of dudes who I like to see get chumped. He played for the Celtics for a long time, he is naturally overrated by dint of his try-hard-ass defense, and he has no aesthetic or ideological qualities of which to speak. In every part of me I’m truly acquainted with, watching Bradley pick up Ben Simmons in transition, get almost immediately laid out, fall to the ground, and throw up his hands in frustration is a mitzvah, a dream, a vision of myself, resplendent in youth, the world ahead of me for the taking. It is, simply, two points that belong to me. I am Ben Simmons, I am the young man at the center of the future for the Sixers, and I have destroyed the banal Bradleys of the world. I am victorious.

But there is a haunting person in the back of me, living in the darkness of my mind, dancing like an impish ballerina, squawking and spinning and chirping, troubling my present consciousness with the horror of a thought that I am not comfortable with. It coos…

Aww man, poor guy…maybe that was a charge.

I wretch, I grab the thought and do everything I can to cast it out of my mind. I am youth, I am the future, I am glorious, I am the bullet train speeding through the mansions of the world. I am not the defender getting blitzed and throwing up his hands, begging for the favor of the ref! I know this! I do not FEEL Shaq’s hand on my chest as he embarasses me in front of millions of people, I AM SHAQ’S HAND, the confident instrument of his petty wrath!

But you cannot turn away from the voices in your head, not really. Giving them purchase gives you fear, and now the fear that I am washed, forever splayed out on the court, lives in me forever, chirping, ever massaging my mind, trying to haul me away from the place I have always believed I belonged—the land of winners. I pray I live with the strength to remain.