YouTube Gold: Darryl Dawkins Smashing Backboards

Gleefully so too.

Darryl Dawkins entered the NBA directly out of high school in 1975. He was 6-11 and 250 at 18 and he was very powerful. In fact, a lot of people think the breakaway rims were designed because of him, but they weren’t.

They were actually designed when a St. Louis assistant asked his uncle to come up with something that could handle 125 lbs. of pressure and then snap back into place. This was in 1976 and had nothing to do with Dawkins, but as we so often see, two things came along in time and became associated with each other.

Dawkins, you see, was a ridiculously powerful dunker and he was passionate about his craft. He named about 17 of his dunks, including one he called the “in your face disgrace.”

In 1979 he broke two backboards in the space of just a few days. By 1981-82, the NBA adopted the new rims and they’ve been used ever since.

However, nothing’s perfect...