Pack legend David Thompson only dunked once in a college game

More accurately, he wasn’t allowed to because of what was informally known as the “Lew Alcindor Rule,” legislation passed 50 years ago this month that prohibited players from making shots directly above the basket’s cylinder.

The rule was passed on March 28, 1967, by a 20-member subcommittee of the National Basketball Committee of the United States and Canada at its annual meeting in Louisville, Ky.

The policy-setting board was made up of representatives of the NCAA, the National Junior College Athletics Association, the National Federation of State High School Associations, the Canadian College Athletic Association, the Canadian Amateur Athletic Association and the Young Men’s Christian Association.

The decision was announced just three days after Alcindor, UCLA’s 7-foot-2 sophomore center, helped head coach John Wooden and the Bruins win the 1967 NCAA Championship against Dayton, the first of its seven consecutive national titles.

At the time, the decision was hailed by coaches, most of whom couldn’t stand the dunk, including Wooden. Their reasoning? It put too much emphasis on size over talent.

The ban was passed by an overwhelming majority “to equalize the defense and offense in play around the basket … because the dunking maneuver does not give the defense an opportunity to block the shot,” said committee spokesperson John Bunn.

“These type of shots — with the player stuffing the ball through the basket with his hand or hands — account for a large portion of the player injuries and damage to the goals.”

Even former NC State player and Everett Case assistant Vic Bubas, who was the head coach at Duke when the ban was passed, approved of the decision.

“It’s not going to affect the game much,” Bubas said. “I think some of the taller players won’t like it.”

Fans, of course, hated it. To them, it was akin to eliminating the home run in baseball or a touchdown pass in football. They went to games on the off chance they could see someone stuff the ball through the basket. But the rules committee stood firm.

Initially, the penalty for a dunk was loss of points and loss of possession. Two years later, a technical foul was charged to any player whose hands were ruled to be in the cylinder.

While harsh, that rule had a particular effect on the legacy of NC State basketball. When 7-foot-2 ½ Tommy Burleson arrived in Raleigh in 1971, he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to dunk. He developed a deadly — and all but unstoppable — hook shot that still took advantage of his height but kept him from going afoul of the dunk ban.

When David Thompson arrived a year later, he depended on a particular play he developed by accident during practice one day. It was called the “alley-oop.” You may have heard of it.

Thompson had two great passing teammates, point guard Monte Towe and power forward Tim Stoddard, who later made a living in major league baseball throwing things.

They could, with great accuracy, throw the ball to the side of the rim where Thompson, with his Guinness Book of World Records-certified 44-inch vertical leap, would catch the ball and majestically lay it in the basket. It was an art form, really, but it robbed the college basketball world of seeing the kind of crowd-cheering, jaw-jarring dunks that were regularly being performed by professional stars like Julius Erving in the American Basketball Association.

“It was tough not to be able to dunk the ball when you are way over the rim," Thompson said in a 2004 interview for Legends of NC State Basketball. “It would have been way easier to catch it and dunk it in one motion.

“I think in a lot of ways an alley-oop without a dunk was a little more artistic play. You have to have body control and be able to hang in the air a little bit and make sure you didn't get it in the cylinder.

“It was a good play, but I would have much rather been able to throw a couple of them down and shatter a few backboards."

Forty-two years ago today, March 1, 1975, in the last home game of Thompson’s college basketball career, he at least put one dunk in his personal record book.

It was Senior Day, when Wolfpack fans said good-bye to the six seniors who had helped the Wolfpack win two ACC titles and the school’s first ever NCAA title. Besides Thompson, Towe and Stoddard, it was the final home game for junior college transfer Morris Rivers, Mark Moeller and Craig Kuszmaul.

Prior to the emotional game, Thompson’s No. 44 jersey was retired, in a ceremony with Chancellor John Caldwell. It’s still the only men’s basketball number the school has ever officially retired from use, with a handful of other numbers “honored.”

Against a ruggedly tough UNC Charlotte program that would two years later go to the NCAA Final Four, the Wolfpack built a 20-point lead in the second half. With 3:39 remaining, Thompson received a length-of-the-court pass from Stoddard and decided in midair that he was going to end his career with a flourish.

So he dunked it.

“I got a technical foul and a standing ovation at the same time,'' Thompson said. “Coach Sloan took me out of the game right after that. It was a great way to end my career at NC State.”

A year later, as a rookie for the Denver Nuggets, Thompson competed in professional basketball’s first dunk contest, which was contested at halftime of the 1976 ABA All-Star Game at Denver’s McNichols Arena.

Erving won the inaugural contest, despite Thompson’s home court advantage, beating a field that also included Artis Gilmore, George Gervin and Larry Kenon.

Later that year, the NBCUSC rules committee lifted the dunk ban for college and high school basketball games.

Thompson, on his way to becoming the ABA’s Rookie of the Year, did get a pretty decent consolation prize. The format of the all-star game — the last played before the ABA and NBA merged later that year — was different.

The first-place and home-standing Nuggets faced a team made up of the best players in the league. The Nuggets scored 52 points in the fourth quarter to win 144-138. Thompson scored a game-high 29 points and was named the game’s Most Valuable Player.

The ABA never had another single-day dunk contest and the NBA didn’t hold one until 1984, Thompson’s last year as a professional player. Two years later, former Wolfpack point guard Spud Webb won the dunk contest during his rookie season, a fitting if unstated tribute to Thompson’s ground-breaking career.

Thompson couldn’t dunk in college. But boy could he.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.

NOTE: The picture accompanying this story was taken by NC State alum Pat Walker, who used a basic camera from the stands to record the Wolfpack’s final home game of the 1974-75 season — the Senior Day contest against UNC-Charlotte at Reynolds Coliseum.

While he had the film developed and turned into slides shortly thereafter, they were never published until he gave them to NC State last fall to digitize and archive.