Vince Carter jumped over 7-foot-2 French center Frédéric Weis at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
Teammate Jason Kidd said it was “One of the best plays I’ve ever seen.” The French media later dubbed it “le dunk de la mort” (“the Dunk of Death”).
“the Dunk of Death” video:
Retton was .050 of a point behind Romania’s Ecaterina Szabo, meaning she needed a 9.95 to tie or a perfect score to win. After sticking her dismount, Retton smiled from ear to ear because she knew that she had done it. Receiving her score of 10, Retton won the all-around competition and became the first American female gymnast to win an individual Olympic medal, the first to win a gold medal and the first to win the all-around. Retton won the most medals (five) of any athlete in the 1984 Olympics.
“Sportsmanship for me is when a guy walks off the court and you really can’t tell whether he won or lost, when he carries himself with pride either way.” – Jim Courier
Johnson ran 19.66 seconds in the 200 m at the U.S. Olympic Trials, breaking Pietro Mennea‘s record of 19.72 seconds, which had stood for 17 years. With that performance he qualified to run at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and prepared to attempt to win both the 200 meters and 400 meters events, a feat never before achieved by a male athlete.
On July 29, Johnson easily captured the 400 m Olympic title with an Olympic Record time of 43.49 seconds, almost one full second ahead of silver medalist Roger Black of Great Britain. At the 200 m final on August 1, Johnson ran the opening 100 meters in 10.12 seconds and finished the race in a world record time of 19.32 seconds, breaking by more than three tenths of a second the previous record he had set in the U.S. Olympic Trials, on the same track one month earlier—the largest improvement ever on a 200 m world record. Some commentators compared the performance to Bob Beamon‘s record-shattering long jump at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
After the 1996 season ended, Johnson received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in any sport in the United States, and was named ABC’s Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year.
Did You Know:
Johnson entered the Olympic finals donning a custom-designed pair of golden-colored Nike racing spikes made with Zytel, causing him to be nicknamed “The Man With the Golden Shoes.” The left shoe was a US size 10.5 while the right shoe was a US size 11, to account for Johnson’s shorter left foot.
“To uncover your true potential you must first find your own limits and then you have to have the courage to blow past them.” – Picabo Street
Carmelo Anthony averaged 28.7 points per game.
This is the the first scoring title of Anthony’s 10-year NBA career. However, weirdly enough, this is not Anthony’s highest scoring average of his career. That came during the 2006-07 season, when he averaged 28.9 points per game for George Karl’s Denver Nuggets. Anthony is the first Knick to win the league scoring title since Bernard King led the league during the 1984-85 season.
Efficiency mavens, of course, will point to a couple of statistics to note that while Anthony’s per-game average will finish higher than Durant’s, that doesn’t mean he’s a superior scorer.
For one thing, Durant will end the season with more total points (2,280, tops in the league) than Anthony (1,920, fifth in the league), the fourth straight year he’ll have led the league in overall scoring, which is something only Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan have done before. (Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and James Harden all scored more overall points than Anthony.) For another, despite playing 14 more games (81, compared to Anthony’s injury-reduced 67), Durant took 56 fewer shots and 80 fewer 3-pointers than Anthony, and finished with significant leads on Anthony in field-goal, 3-point and free-throw percentage.
As a matter of fact, Durant will end the season having made 51 percent of his field goals, 41.6 percent of his long-range tries and a league-leading 90.5 percent of his freebies. That makes him the sixth player since the NBA introduced the 3-point line before the 1979-80 season to join the so-called “50-40-90 Club,” alongside Steve Nash, Larry Bird, Dirk Nowitzki, Mark Price and Reggie Miller.
Congrats to Durant and Anthony on their respective milestones.
“If a team wants to intimidate you physically and you let them, they’ve won.” – Mia Hamm
“The only disability in life is a bad attitude.” – Scott Hamilton
Michael Jordan and Larry Bird as part of the 1992 U.S. Olympic National Dream Team.
AthleticPoetics 