Remembering a Play: Vince Carter and the Olympic Dunk of Death

It’s a fine line between imitation and honoring someone, and this new Splinter sports vertical will be careful about adhering to the Deadspin ethos of never sticking to sports without stepping on the toes of what is frankly my favorite website: The Defector.

We want to honor Deadspin/Defector’s Remembering a Guy series in Splinter’s new sports vertical, which has evolved past being just a web series and become a permanent fixture in the culture now. We will not remember guys—I think David Roth and company may have remembered all of them by this point anyway—but we will periodically Remember a Play here at Splinter, as we dedicate blogs to plays and moments that connect sports to the wide range of human emotions.

I’ll kick this series off with the greatest in-game dunk in the history of basketball that still makes me cackle with glee every time I see it 24 years later.

I grew up playing baseball the most, but basketball was my first love. Few things made me more excited as a kid than awesome basketball plays, and Vince Carter was one of my favorite players. As long as I live, I will never forget the time he dunked poor Frédéric Weis into the Earth’s core at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia.