Brown.

Gotta be Hartmut Ortman. I saw him throw "down" a dunk that missed the basket but landed in the seats along the sideline.

Tremaine Fowlkes? would routinely throw down in traffic with two hands. violent dunker. not flashy but pure power in a crowd.

Yes, Jaylen, but Murray was a good second.

Circus King.
Gene Ransom.

joe amos yaks said:

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Circus King.
Gene Ransom.

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I never saw the 5-9 Ransom dunk in a game, but I saw him get way above the rim a number of times on some back-side alley-oops. (If the mid-late 1970s were before your time, imagine a Jerome Randle with 10-15 lbs more muscle. Super multi-sport athlete out of Berkeley High.)

I'm gonna go with the first Cal Basketball player that I saw do multiple great dunks: Roy Fisher (6-6 small forward, late '80s)

Murray, in part because he made awesome dunks in the most important games. I can't say the same for Brown. That said, Murray had Kidd which helped him look good at times. Murray was smooth and had style.

Carl Boyd. I remember a dunk at the Coliseum that almost brought the house down.

Jackie Ridgle, although dunking was banned at that time because of Alcindor.

I can't believe this is even up for debate.

Uh hello? #23




(Though it's unclear to me whether he actually dunked in a real game. Shhhh...that's irrelevant)

Big C mentions Gene Ransom. This clip has good "stuff' on Gene R. Doesn't show him
dunking, but maybe you can see plays that indicate he could have done just
about anything.






Being a Cal fan: You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

GO BEARS!!!

The Thurmanator!!!!!

BiPolar Bear said:

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The Thurmanator!!!!!

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5'10" KJ Roberts once found himself far ahead on a break and to the surprise and delight of the crowd instead of taking the easy layup he threw down a windmill dunk.

Charles (Charlie) Johnson. The dunk was banned at the time, so he could only do it in warmups, but he was the first 6-footer I remember dunking. And I wonder if he really was 6-foot.

KJ needs a mention. He had a dunk at Stanfurd that defied gravity. I think he used his left hand to pull himself up an extra couple of feet.

Monty Buckley and Lamond Murray.

I don't have a favorite Cal dunker. Maybe Bob Presley. In 1957, I saw Bay Area basketball legend, 5'-8" Joe Gardere of McClymonds (and later St. Marys) during warmups before a game. He was standing under the basket rebounding free throws for his teammates. When there was a missed shot, Gardere would leap from a standing postion, up above the rim and slam the missed shot down with a dunk. Shot after shot.

A dunk should be worth 1 point. Or the basket should be raised 2 feet. The dunk requires only impressive leaping ability, and requires less skill than any shot in basketball. If a Cal player misses a dunk, he should be benched for at least 10 minutes to think about it. Devon Hardin had the worst and most missed dunks in Cal history. If any Cal player cost Cal a victory by missing a dunk, or injured himself while dunking, maybe he should be dismissed from the team (just kidding about the last part.)

SFCityBear said:

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A dunk should be worth 1 point.

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SFCityBear said:

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I don't have a favorite Cal dunker. Maybe Bob Presley. In 1957, I saw Bay Area basketball legend, 5'-8" Joe Gardere of McClymonds (and later St. Marys) during warmups before a game. He was standing under the basket rebounding free throws for his teammates. When there was a missed shot, Gardere would leap from a standing postion, up above the rim and slam the missed shot down with a dunk. Shot after shot.

A dunk should be worth 1 point. Or the basket should be raised 2 feet. The dunk requires only impressive leaping ability, and requires less skill than any shot in basketball. If a Cal player misses a dunk, he should be benched for at least 10 minutes to think about it. Devon Hardin had the worst and most missed dunks in Cal history. If any Cal player cost Cal a victory by missing a dunk, or injured himself while dunking, maybe he should be dismissed from the team (just kidding about the last part.)

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Instead of dropping the dunk to 1 point, why not have style points? A hook shot with your off hand? Worth 3.5, a tear drop in the lane while moving? 2.5. A jump shot 2.0, A layup, 1.5, a reverse layup, 2.0. A free throw with your eyes closed? (Michael Jordan) 5 points.

Well, a lay-in using the backboard is 3 points.
A lay-in to the hoop is 2 points.
A dunk is 1 point.
And a slam dunk is zero points . . . for style and ego only.

Btw--I remember the SMc greats Joe Gardere, Bobby Dold and Leroy Doss, Meschery, Hart, Sigady, Gray and the others ~~~.

UrsaMajor said:

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SFCityBear said:

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I don't have a favorite Cal dunker. Maybe Bob Presley. In 1957, I saw Bay Area basketball legend, 5'-8" Joe Gardere of McClymonds (and later St. Marys) during warmups before a game. He was standing under the basket rebounding free throws for his teammates. When there was a missed shot, Gardere would leap from a standing postion, up above the rim and slam the missed shot down with a dunk. Shot after shot.

A dunk should be worth 1 point. Or the basket should be raised 2 feet. The dunk requires only impressive leaping ability, and requires less skill than any shot in basketball. If a Cal player misses a dunk, he should be benched for at least 10 minutes to think about it. Devon Hardin had the worst and most missed dunks in Cal history. If any Cal player cost Cal a victory by missing a dunk, or injured himself while dunking, maybe he should be dismissed from the team (just kidding about the last part.)

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Instead of dropping the dunk to 1 point, why not have style points? A hook shot with your off hand? Worth 3.5, a tear drop in the lane while moving? 2.5. A jump shot 2.0, A layup, 1.5, a reverse layup, 2.0. A free throw with your eyes closed? (Michael Jordan) 5 points.

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Very creative. One trouble with it is the scorekeeper would have to be a judge, and then you'd likely have more baskets disputed, more replays, and the game would be even longer than it is now. The blindfolded free throws would be interesting. Rick Barry might have loved it. And I can think of a number of players who might shoot better blindfolded than without. Sam Singer, Ty Wallace. In the NBA, Ben Wallace, Wilt, and Shaq.

joe amos yaks said:

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Well, a lay-in using the backboard is 3 points.
A lay-in to the hoop is 2 points.
A dunk is 1 point.
And a slam dunk is zero points . . . for style and ego only.

Btw--I remember the SMc greats Joe Gardere, Bobby Dold and Leroy Doss, Meschery, Hart, Sigady, Gray and the others ~~~.

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Joe,

That is pretty good. I might make one change, because coaches always taught us that it was more accurate to shoot a layup off the backboard than try to lay it up right at the rim. So maybe consider making it 2 points for a layup off the glass and 3 points for one laid up at the rim. Either way, we'd have to increase today's 3-point shot to 4 points, because it the lowest percentage shot, on average.

Well, you've seen some of the best St Marys has ever had. Steve Gray and I grew up in the same neighborhood, and we played a lot of games together and against each other. He used to borrow money from me for cokes at St Agnes Youth Center, and borrow my bike for 20 minutes, and not bring it back for hours. I used to whip him regularly at Horse, but he never paid off the bets. It didn't matter, I got bragging rights for a while, until he went off to St Marys and made All-America, and averaged 26 points a game. And I went into oblivion.

LaRoy Doss was the recreation director at St Agnes one summer, I played in a pickup game with him and Tom Meschery, K.C. Jones, Hal Perry, and Gary Lewis (the SF 49er fullback). I was the uncoordinated midget on the floor, and they all treated me kindly. St Agnes drew a lot of great players in those days, including Bill Russell and Abe Woodson, the great SF 49er halfback. Around 1958 or so, Russell and K.C. Jones ran a summer basketball camp for two weeks at St Agnes, for $100 a head. They made money, but not a single kid in the neighborhood could afford to attend.

SFCityBear said:

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UrsaMajor said:

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SFCityBear said:

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I don't have a favorite Cal dunker. Maybe Bob Presley. In 1957, I saw Bay Area basketball legend, 5'-8" Joe Gardere of McClymonds (and later St. Marys) during warmups before a game. He was standing under the basket rebounding free throws for his teammates. When there was a missed shot, Gardere would leap from a standing postion, up above the rim and slam the missed shot down with a dunk. Shot after shot.

A dunk should be worth 1 point. Or the basket should be raised 2 feet. The dunk requires only impressive leaping ability, and requires less skill than any shot in basketball. If a Cal player misses a dunk, he should be benched for at least 10 minutes to think about it. Devon Hardin had the worst and most missed dunks in Cal history. If any Cal player cost Cal a victory by missing a dunk, or injured himself while dunking, maybe he should be dismissed from the team (just kidding about the last part.)

---

Instead of dropping the dunk to 1 point, why not have style points? A hook shot with your off hand? Worth 3.5, a tear drop in the lane while moving? 2.5. A jump shot 2.0, A layup, 1.5, a reverse layup, 2.0. A free throw with your eyes closed? (Michael Jordan) 5 points.

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Very creative. One trouble with it is the scorekeeper would have to be a judge, and then you'd likely have more baskets disputed, more replays, and the game would be even longer than it is now. The blindfolded free throws would be interesting. Rick Barry might have loved it. And I can think of a number of players who might shoot better blindfolded than without. Sam Singer, Ty Wallace. In the NBA, Ben Wallace, Wilt, and Shaq.

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The East German judge only gave him 1.5 on that kiss off the glass. Clearly, we have to worry about the fix. Do we have collusion here today folks? Will the Communist judges all align against the West? These and other questions after a message from our sponsor.....

SMc had a physically small team. . . Meschery being tBeast at 6'6" ~250# at forward. Did he dunk? The Gael's center was 6'5". Hart and Doss were thin as pole beans @ 6'4" - 6'5". They dunked.

Also that was quite a game at the Rec Center. USF greats, too, and Gary Lewis the big FB-type RB on the SF 49er roster during the years between Joe Perry and Kenny Willard? A big fast Lad from TxAMu? Traded to/from Detroit? Did he dunk?

petalumabear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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UrsaMajor said:

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SFCityBear said:

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I don't have a favorite Cal dunker. Maybe Bob Presley. In 1957, I saw Bay Area basketball legend, 5'-8" Joe Gardere of McClymonds (and later St. Marys) during warmups before a game. He was standing under the basket rebounding free throws for his teammates. When there was a missed shot, Gardere would leap from a standing postion, up above the rim and slam the missed shot down with a dunk. Shot after shot.

A dunk should be worth 1 point. Or the basket should be raised 2 feet. The dunk requires only impressive leaping ability, and requires less skill than any shot in basketball. If a Cal player misses a dunk, he should be benched for at least 10 minutes to think about it. Devon Hardin had the worst and most missed dunks in Cal history. If any Cal player cost Cal a victory by missing a dunk, or injured himself while dunking, maybe he should be dismissed from the team (just kidding about the last part.)

---

Instead of dropping the dunk to 1 point, why not have style points? A hook shot with your off hand? Worth 3.5, a tear drop in the lane while moving? 2.5. A jump shot 2.0, A layup, 1.5, a reverse layup, 2.0. A free throw with your eyes closed? (Michael Jordan) 5 points.

---

Very creative. One trouble with it is the scorekeeper would have to be a judge, and then you'd likely have more baskets disputed, more replays, and the game would be even longer than it is now. The blindfolded free throws would be interesting. Rick Barry might have loved it. And I can think of a number of players who might shoot better blindfolded than without. Sam Singer, Ty Wallace. In the NBA, Ben Wallace, Wilt, and Shaq.

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The East German judge only gave him 1.5 on that kiss off the glass. Clearly, we have to worry about the fix. Do we have collusion here today folks? Will the Communist judges all align against the West? These and other questions after a message from our sponsor.....

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Joe McCarthy, where are you now when we really need you?

Seriously, here's a true story you might like (or might not):

One of my Cal roommates, David L., went to medical school at Wayne State and flunked out. He later went to medical school in Bologna, Italy, which was the oldest medical school in the world. The Soviet National Basketball Team came to Bologna to play a game against the Italian National Basketball Team and David went to the game. First you might know that Italians are very nationalistic, but you also need to know that at that time, Bologna was the center or hotbed of Communists and sympathy for Communism in Italy. The game was a close and exciting struggle, with the score changing hands many times but the fans were unusually well-behaved and relatively quiet. The game came down to the final second, with the Italian team up a point. A foul was called, and a Soviet player went to the line with a free throw attempt which if he made it, would tie the score and send the game into overtime. David had been amazed at how quiet the Italian fans had been throughout the game, so he was really interested in how the fans were going to react while the free throw attempt was made. The Soviet player bounced the ball a couple of times, and at that moment without a sound, nearly all the Italian fans in the arena took out white handkerchiefs and began waving them to try and distract the Soviet player. He missed the free throw, and the Italian team won, and all was well in Bologna.

joe amos yaks said:

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SMc had a physically small team. . . Meschery being tBeast at 6'6" ~250# at forward. Did he dunk? The Gael's center was 6'5". Hart and Doss were thin as pole beans @ 6'4" - 6'5". They dunked.

Also that was quite a game at the Rec Center. USF greats, too, and Gary Lewis the big FB-type RB on the SF 49er roster during the years between Joe Perry and Kenny Willard? A big fast Lad from TxAMu? Traded to/from Detroit? Did he dunk?

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I saw Meschery play a lot of games, but I don't remember him dunking a basketball. It would be better to ask Helltopay1, because he saw Meschery play a lot, and actually played with him a lot as well, I believe. That was a really good St Marys team, and they almost beat Cal in the 1958-59 pre-conference season, losing by only 2 points I think. But in the NCAA regional, Cal had become a much better team, and beat the same Gaels by 20. And Cal did not dunk the ball. I don't even remember Imhoff dunking, but I could be wrong. I'm pretty sure no one else on that roster dunked. Maybe Jack Grout.

Gary Lewis was about 6'-4" and 240 lbs at Poly high school in San Francisco. I don't remember him as being particularly fast, but he was strong as a bull. He was bigger than most of the high school linemen, and literally ran right over most tacklers. 100+ yards/game easy. He also started at forward on Poly's City Champion basketball team, and went to Arizona State to play football. The 49ers used him as fullback in a T-formation, and as a running back in Red Hickey's shotgun offense. He was traded to New Orleans in 1970. Died tragically at age 44 of ALS.

Lewis didn't dunk in that pickup game at St Agnes. Nobody dunked, as I remember. Dunking was not a big thing in those days. Bill Russell, the Bay Area's premier dunker at the time, had left town to play in the NBA, and there was hardly any NBA TV, so not many players here were copying him and other NBA players. Dunking is kind of an in-your-face thing, and players didn't respect that too much. Players mostly liked to beat you with an assortment of different moves and shots, rather than just jump up over you, I think. Wilt Chamberlain said he did not dunk often, because he did not want to make other players look bad. Now there is dunking and trash talking. Everything is in-your-face. It is a different game.

There was an 8-foot basket at St Agnes, put there for the little kids to have fun with, but they usually couldn't use it, because older and bigger players wanted to have games dunking on that basket. If you can visualize 6'-5" players having a game at an 8 foot basket, well it was a real donnybrook. Some of the taller ones could almost do a standing dunk.

My favorite was Monty Buckley's dunk against Furd in heavy traffic followed up by chicken walk through the key. Can't find a video of it yet.

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/-picture-id228451?k=6&m=228451&s=612x612&w=0&h=Mat38j7RMvR-qVjzML1XdmR_x__nvO9FsKfdKHmXvrg=

Circus
Jaylen.
Honorable mention to marcus lee - his dunk show in pregame was really impressive. Unfortunately, it was not replicated during the game.

Akili Jones hands down!

superbear99 said:

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Circus
Jaylen.
Honorable mention to marcus lee - his dunk show in pregame was really impressive. Unfortunately, it was not replicated during the game.

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Circus King? Did he actually dunk a ball? If so, it gives hope to all us short guys. Ooops. Vertically challenged guys.

What about Brian Wethers? He must have had some good dunks.

the most ferocious jams ever in a Cal uniform, and it ain't close ....

Devon Hardin . . .

One of the most athletic big guys.
One of the nicest players I've met.
Probably also has the Cal record for most missed dunks.

Like many, his overall work did not translate to in-game situations that well (similar to many shooters).


For in-game, clutch moment dunking, I'd go with Lamond Murray. Probably because he seemed so calm and unassuming at other times. Roy Fisher is up there as well IMHO. Also Billy Dreher had more good dunking moments than expected (more than a few against bigger, taller defenders - who then looked dumbfounded).