He was a poster boy. In the 1980s and 1990s, the image of Dominique Wilkins dunking the rim in mid-air decorated the folders and hung on the walls of many basketball fans. The American forward, although born in Paris 64 years ago, symbolised that fantasy world, still a very distant universe, that was then the NBA. In that dream world, Wilkins was a spectacular dunker, the man who in 12 seasons with the Atlanta Hawks (1982-1994), 15 seasons in total in the American League, competed with Michael Jordan to be the king of rim-smashing. In the historic duel between the two stars, Dominique won the 1985 dunk contest against His Majesty, and repeated the success in 1990. He was a basketball player with springs.
“It was Jordan and I, both of us competing against each other,” recalls Wilkins today, who is visiting Spain to participate in the NBA Junior European Finals in Valencia: 12 teams (six men’s and six women’s) made up of some of the best 15-year-old players from Croatia, England, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Spain; “What we did in a dunk contest is what we normally did in games. It’s nothing we had to work on especially for those occasions. Who was better? We were different in the way we approached the basket. Michael Jordan flew, he was a glider. I crushed with everything, I poured all my strength into the basket. Our way of playing in that sense was different. For me a dunk was mainly the way to motivate the public and my team. I felt that if at the beginning of the game I could make a spectacular play or a great dunk, that motivated my teammates to play hard and the fans at our house. It was a way to get an advantage.”
Wilkins lived through an unrepeatable era in the mecca of basketball, where legends like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird met on the court. Even so, he is not inclined to single out even one of them as the best of all time. “I don’t believe in just one player. There are several players who have marked an era. Look at Bill Russell. That man won 11 rings with the Boston Celtics. And Wilt Chamberlain? It’s surprising that people don’t talk about him as one of the best, because of the way he dominated the game. So I don’t believe in the best player of all time thing, because there are many who were great.”
The dunk king is still with the Atlanka Hawks, a franchise of which he is vice president of operations. From that position he has observed the evolution of the game, the change towards a more physical and faster style, and also how European basketball players have elbowed their way into the American stardom. “Today the boys have more freedom of movement due to their physical improvement, there are many pick and rolls and jump shots. And above all three-point shots. People look at the basket more all the time,” explains Wilkins, who was also a kind of pioneer when he crossed the ocean and signed up for two European adventures, with Panathinaikos (who won the Euroleague in 1996) and with Fortitudo Bologna. “I wanted to do something different,” he recalls about those experiences outside the NBA; “I had visited Greece and I loved it. So when I had the option, I went there. They made it worthwhile. Today, basketball in the United States has learned from Europe, it has changed its view regarding the style of play there. It also happened when the first Europeans came to the NBA and were surprised by the way the game is played.” All this experience has served Wilkins to take note of foreign talent, and so the Hawks have chosen the number one player in the NBA. draft Frenchman Zaccharie Risacher, a 2.08m forward who was born in Málaga, when his father, Stéphane, was playing for Unicaja. “We made the best choice,” the former basketball player said.
In this scenario, Wilkins warns that “the rest of the world will have to play very well” if they want to have even the slightest chance of defeating the Dream Team that LeBron James and Stephen Curry will lead in the Paris Games. And meanwhile, he observes the youth talent in Valencia. “Now I have another responsibility, giving advice to young people,” he says. He also, for example, judged a dunk contest, remembering those times when he flew with Michael Jordan.
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