From time to time, at one of the camps she runs for children in her native Australia, Patty Mills will be attended to by one of her lifelong fans with a request: Can you wrap it up for me?
For most NBA players, it would be a breeze. He would clear a path, measure his steps, and drive the ball over the edge with authority. He landed and his fans would celebrate, because they had just seen something unfathomable.
Illustration by Davide Barco
Unfathomable is also the right word, because there’s a problem with this scenario: Patty Mills doesn’t sink. Of all the options he could take with the ball, sinking, he says, is not even a later thought. “I mean he’s at the bottom of the list, but to be honest, he’s probably not even on the list,” Mills says. Not being able to show the kids, “This is a definite moment when I say to myself, ‘Oh, I don’t think I can get there right now, mate,'” Mills says. “But I’m still working on it.”
Mills is one of the few players in a select club: those successful NBA runners who, for one reason or another, have never been stranded. Since the 1996–97 season (the first data is available at Basketball-Reference.com), 1,801 different players have combined for 210,842 regular season dunks and 1,259 of 1,367 players (or 92%) who have played at least 1,000 minutes. wrapped at least once.
That leaves 108 contributors constant over 25 seasons without a delicate two-handed slam, 11 of whom are playing this season. The list goes from MVPs (Steve Nash) to solid veterans (JJ Redick, TJ McConnell) to crew (Troy Daniels). Others, like Fred VanVleet, Ricky Rubio and DJ Augustin, have played long enough to become league basics. The 6 ‘1 “Mills, now in its 12th season, ranks fourth in the standings for most games played between active players without any hair, is a member of both contingents and has resigned to a race without a head. ” It’s a huge part of the game and it’s what attracts fans and makes basketball basketball, “says Mills.” Putting a ball – cloistering it – through a hoop, I haven’t tried for a long time. I feel the more I wait, the less chance I have ”.
Steve Novak wasn’t sure what to do when he got the call. It was early 2012, at the height of Linsanity, in New York City, and his agent learned that the NBA wanted him to participate in the dunk contest. Jeremy Lin was sleeping on the couch of his teammate Landry Fields at the time, and as Novak recalls, the plan was for Fields to sink on a futon tied to the futon. When Fields had to retire due to injury, JR Smith was approved to take over. When Smith retired due to an ankle injury, the offer was for the next player on the roster.
The NBA was eager to capitalize on the excitement surrounding Linsanity and adding Novak, who had never fallen in five seasons as a professional, was just another one of the theaters ’wrinkles. For a player with a few million euros in professional earnings, the cash incentive ($ 20,000 just to participate) was not insignificant, and the potential focus could have worked wonders for the Knicks. He had been pushing the league to let him participate in the three-point round, but they preferred Kevin Durant. At 6’10 ”, no player as tall as Novak has appeared in so many games without doing so. And he wasn’t about to risk becoming a meme over the All-Star weekend.
In theory, dodging is what separates the blessed by the basketball gods and the popular ones we have on earth. The average person can take 10,000 bridges each week and eventually develop a decent kick. And all it takes to become a solid defender in your weekend career is to be willing to pay attention to your opponent and play hard. But most humans could try to raise their frames to the beams from now until the day they die, and yet they never ever get close to their backs.
Novak rushes to set the record: he can dive. Or at least at some point. There is evidence somewhere on the internet if you know where to look: snippets of the most colorful jams from college and routine shots of practice and during the previous game. He even remembers his first dive into the game. He was in eighth grade, dominating his tweens teammates in a whopping 6 ‘5 “. After seeing Novak throw it into practice, a coach approached him with an incentive. If the big friendly giant could getting into a game, he’d be rewarded with a $ 20 gift card at a local ice cream parlor. “If I had no motivation before,” Novak recalls, “I’m like,‘ This has to happen. ’
Illustration by Davide Barco
”The dunk was a one-handed affair that he stole in the quick jump. In his words, he was cruel. What he couldn’t know then was that it would be one of his last.
Novak’s story is surprisingly common in a league that idolizes slam. Mills, McConnell and Daniels are among the countless players with stories about sinking into the rims down at the entrances and into the growing gardens, mimicking the ruffles they saw on TV. Dunking was one of the things that made them fall in love with the game. It just never happened to professionals.
As is the case with Novak, there is video evidence of Mills dunk-ing, and not just from the early years of his career. Before a home game against the Cavaliers in March 2017, Mills grabbed an alley he handed with one hand before exclaiming into TNT’s microphones, “Oh man, I should have saved it for the game! ”.
A quick YouTube search will show videos of McConnell winning the 76ers preseason contest (a competition he says he was forced to participate in) in 2016 and Daniels winning Play of the Game honors for a period with the Rio Vipers Grande Valley of the League D in 2014 for a two-handed blow a cut. So why has none of them been able to immerse themselves in an NBA game?
For starters, the non-potholes are on the ground to do other things. Like Novak, who made 43.0% of his three-point attempts, Mills (39.1%) and Daniels (39.5%) are sharp pitchers from beyond the arc, and McConnell, who makes averaging eight assists per 36 minutes of play, has a penchant for ingenious passes. The contributions they can make by discovering or finding an open teammate weigh the appeal of a prominent envelope.
Another answer is fear. Novak recalls two real chances to get his first goal in the NBA. The first came early in his career with the Clippers, when he “came out with a flat tire” and resorted to a finger roller. The other came when he played against the Knicks against the Bucks and was alone at the fast break. He approached and decided this was his time.
“It just took me a little too long to get down to the edge, and Larry Sanders, who was in the Bucks at the time, was chasing me like a bat out of hell,” Novak says. “And it scared me, so I rushed it and, instead of taking the right steps, I did it with a little finger as well.”
The threat of embarrassment on the verge of the throw also weighs on McConnell, now with the Pacers. “Being 6 ‘1, there are a lot of players who look like tire protectors to me,” McConnell says. If I see someone (regardless of who they are) at an amazing distance, I don’t try to dive in. “
Beyond that, dodging poses health risks. Daniels, who is currently unsigned after seven seasons with so many teams, says that despite having 6 ‘4 “and having a decent jumping ability, the high chances of getting damaged in a mess are what drives him towards start-up.If he were to land and turn an ankle, his career could be in jeopardy.
“I rarely sink when I work,” Daniels says. “It seems to me second nature to try to shoot an iron or a float. Guysbviament, the boys are much older in the NBA, much stronger. Your chances of getting this mess are very slim and your chances of getting hurt are very high. . . . I don’t want to try to do something I’m not familiar with and end up hurting myself. “
Gone are the days when coaches told Novak that grabbing a three instead of fighting inside was “settling down”. But Novak is an atypical aspect even in this group: not only did he never try to dive into his 11-year career, but he only tried 16 firms. It was a stretch of four before most stretches of four were used properly, and 78% of his career attempts came from beyond the arc.
At first, the coaches couldn’t unlock it. He was an imposing forward who did not enjoy much strokes with painting and probably never became a consumer of glass. It wasn’t until Rick Adelman was hired to lead the Rockets before Novak’s second season that things started to click. Later, when he played for Mike D’Antoni in New York, his shooting skills became a feature of the Knicks’ offense.
“He was saying to me,‘ Hey, Steve, I know the guy you guard may be able to dial you. I’m fine with that. I’m not good if he scores more than you, “says Novak.” And it’s like, Whoa. That makes a lot of sense to me. If I do three, and he does two, we’re fine here. “
The fact that some players choose to play below the edge doesn’t mean they don’t look surprised when teammates or opponents shoot above. McConnell recalls being impressed to see his 76ers teammates Richaun Holmes and Nerlens Noel throw him in Philadelphia. Daniels quotes Vince Carter and Derrick Jones Jr., who despite having calves that Daniels says “look like [pencils]”: He won the 2020 dunk contest, as his favorites. Mills has also played alongside many tall travelers, but values dunkers of all stripes. At the end of Manu Ginóbili’s career, the Argentine wing and some Spurs teammates held a competition. Ginobili, Boris Diaw and Tiago Splitter fought to see who would end up with more dunks each year. After hearing the friendly bet, Mills made sure he participated.
“I would never have any, but I ended up being the referee and decided what would qualify as a mess for the other guys,” Mills says. “It was towards the end of his three races. A dive for them at any time was like a great dive.
Splitter, who weighed 6.11 “and weighed 245 pounds during his career, won every year, but at various points each season, Diaw and Ginobili took the lead. The only insurance was Mills and his egg The countless deployments were far from his first wrap when he was a teenager, when he posterized an opponent so violently that he collided as his cousin, a teammate, screamed and jumped around him. even then.I feel like I’ve lost nothing but some credibility on the street among his younger fans.
McConnell hasn’t fully counted on his chances of collapsing before retirement, though that doesn’t seem likely. He prefers to be on the other side of an alley-oop pass. “Maybe once before my career is over, if I have a quick break, maybe I’ll get Myles [Turner] to get up and sink. You know, when I’m 33 or 34, ”says McConnell. “It should be that no one crossed half the track and there was no effort from the other team to be able to do anything.”
Illustration by Davide Barco
As for Novak, he does not regret finishing his career without any sinking or rejecting the invitation to the dive contest. He still watches every year and laughs at the idea that he was once asked to participate. “I think, Holy, I made the right decision,” Novak says. “I should have somehow found a way to get the hoop back and a mini sofa.”
Read more of the stories on the SI daily cover