In the locker room, alone for a moment, Vince Carter he stares at the small monitor brought by a collaborator. Luckily someone recorded everything from the sidelines, using a small video camera. He pushes the “play” button, opens his eyes wide himself, goes back, watches the entire scene again. Seven times. Seven times the same flash, the same a leap that seems to deny every law of gravity and common sense. All around, the companions are still screaming, unable to believe what they have just seen in theSydney Arena. He smiles, almost intimidated by his own audacity. It is September 25, 2000, the USA and France face each other at the Olympics and history has just changed shape: it has taken the trajectory of a body flying over a 218 centimeter giant.
The “Dunk de la mort” – the crush of death – was not born on that parquet, but in the fury with which Vince Carter faces that Olympics which, paradoxically, he shouldn’t even have been at. Rudy Tomjanovich, the coach of Team USA, had preferred Ray Allen over him, only to then recall Carter when Tom Gugliotta’s injury left a sudden void in the roster. Carter, who they nicknamed in Toronto “Air Canada” due to his ability to take off towards the basket, he feels the sting of the missed exclusion. The urgency to demonstrate that the place in that team is not a gift, but a duty. In Sydney he will play like a man who gives no respite to either his opponents or himself: Averaged 15 points, 25 dunks on 41 baskets. A proportion that says much more than any speech.
And then, that unique piece.
The action originates from a listless pass, intercepted after two American errors, almost a counterattack born off the bounce. France is unbalanced, but not defenseless: in front of Carter stands Frederic Weis, a pillar of 218 centimetres who the Knicks chose at number 15 in the draft and who never set foot in the NBA due to a number of physical problems. There is no space for a run-up, no time to prepare the gesture. Carter simply proceeds and then stops at the last mark of the small area. Two quick times, then he goes up. Weis doesn’t move, he remains there, impaled, perhaps convinced that the simple fact of occupying that space with his size is enough. But Carter continues to climb. He places a hand on the Frenchman’s shoulder as if it were a step, and passes him. Literally. On the other side of Weis’ body the iron awaits him, which welcomes the most audacious and dangerous dunk ever. At the moment of maximum elevation, his knee is at Weis’ head level. It literally crushes him in the face.
It’s year zero of virality before virality. There are no YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, there are no cell phones ready to chase any stunt. The video circulates on an amateur camera, then passes from hand to hand like an memorabilia. Carter will watch that film again in the locker room, repeatedly, with the same amazement as his teammates: “Did you see what you did?”they ask him repeatedly. He doesn’t answer: he lets the images do the talking. He didn’t know what to add.
Also because in the following years he will try several times to recreate that moment, calling the tallest teammates of the franchises in which he plays under the knife. Every attempt ends the same way: he stumbles, falls, gets caught. He will say it himself, almost resigned: “I never did it again”.
Frederic Weistoday far from the fields, remembers that day with disarming tenderness. “I had closed my eyes. I didn’t know what had happened. I only remember Sonko on the bench celebrating as if I had dunked it. But I was the one who hit it in the face. That day I understood that men can fly.” He jokes about it, but also confesses a detail that few know: in the final Carter will try to jump it again. Weis stops him with a foul, Carter turns around, smiles at him. A small truce between those who fly and those who stay on the ground.
Twenty years after that night, that moment continues to live on as a founding rite. And it coincides, symbolically, with the year in which Carter had already transformed the slam dunk into an artistic language. He had done it at the Dunk Contest at All-Star Weekend 2000won with a series of performances that are still considered the absolute pinnacle of the specialty today.
But in Sydney, above Weis, there is not only the greatness of the technical and athletic gesture. There is a challenge to physics, to logic, to the very idea of what is possible on a basketball court.
That evening he looks at her seven times. The world is still replaying.