1977 NBA Slam Dunk champ Darnell Hillman is finally given a trophy, 40 years later
On Wednesday evening, during what was an otherwise-anonymous Pistons/Pacers contest played between two mediocre playoff hopefuls, Indiana ABA legend Darnell Hillman was outfitted with a trophy that not many NBA fans, ourselves included, knew that he was owed.
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The Pacers presented Hillman, a high-flying forward from the team’s championship ABA days, with a trophy commemorating his status as the NBA’s 1977 Slam Dunk Contest winner. If you were unaware that the NBA had such a contest, you wouldn’t be alone – the impressively-conceived yet drearily-executed contest saw Hillman rise above a series of NBA stars and scrubs in what was a season-long event televised by CBS, broadcast during the halftime of regular season and playoff games.
His take for winning the contest over 13 others? Some $15,000 – not a bad haul during the NBA’s low period.
Hillman, who has worked for the Pacers for over a decade as an alumni relations director and clinics and camps counselor, finally took in the hardware after four, long decades as a gift from the club. Check out the surprise, given to Hillman after he presented current Pacer Glenn Robinson III with the trophy he earned during his 2017 victory:
Here’s a closer look at the trophy:
Darnell Hillman won the dunk contest in 1977, got a check, but no trophy. So the Pacers made one for him ???? pic.twitter.com/savyTVsvum
— Michael Grady (@Grady) March 9, 2017
You don’t have to be a basketball historian to recall the 1976 ABA dunk contest, which featured Artis Gilmore, Larry Kenon, David Thompson and eventual winner Julius Erving:
All four were picked not only for their dunking prowess, but because each of the participants in that year’s contest were due to play in Denver during the ABA’s 1976 All-Star Game, and didn’t require a flight and accommodations surrounding the event. This was a big deal for the league at the time, a collection that had already run out of money and was but a few months away from folding.
When the league did eventually dissipate and the NBA decided to add four former ABA teams as “expansion” clubs prior to the 1976-77 season, the somewhat staid senior circuit was blessed with a litany of bounding, athletic talents that had previously either been kept under wraps by the culture of the sport in its current NBA form at worst or, at best, denied national TV exposure.
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While the NBA did not sustain the ABA’s one-year tradition of televising a dunk competition during the All-Star Game’s halftime break, it is to be credited for encouraging as series of players to take part in a season-long one-on-one competition that played out during halftimes of its league’s few nationally-televised contests.
The idea, with the 10 of the NBA’s 24 1977 All-Stars now featuring ABA roots, was to mine the league’s newly-established 22 teams for knockout dunkers that would fly to various exhibition spots in order to compete for a spot in the championship round, one that would take place during that June’s NBA championship (we weren’t calling it the “Finals” just yet).
The results were not often spectacular, even if the names were. Here is the league’s all-time leading scorer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, deigning to showcase his dunking skills at the Phoenix Coliseum alongside Detroit’s M.L. Carr and hometown favorite Ronnie Lee:
Here is Chicago’s Mickey Johnson and Milwaukee Bucks’ Alex English going at it:
Hillman’s award-winning footage, shot during the 1977 NBA Finals, is tougher to find. Hillman himself, over a decade ago, pointed out that he’d “been trying to get that video for 20 years,” and clips of the runner-up (Golden State’s Larry McNeill) appear to be missing in action.
We located some of it in what was a tribute video created for the former San Jose Spartan:
This is the greatest stuff. Right down to the warm-ups, chain, ‘Bottle Shoppe’ practice shirt, and dunks that we’d rise from our seats to appreciate even in 2017, had a modern player been able to simulate one of Hillman’s throwdowns in game action.
Hillman was “Dr. Dunk” before anyone else, and it’s important to note that he was more than a great haircut and a few cool stuffs.
The forward/center was a consistent, active force on both ends for the Pacers in the 1970s, a needed athleticism provider and two-time ABA champion on an Indiana team that, despite its dynastic gifts, still needed that extra edge on a team mostly made up of (however legendary) floor-bound types. Darnell averaged 10.6 points and 8.4 rebounds 1.6 blocks in 28 minutes a game while in his prime with the ABA Pacers.
The sight of Darnell Hillman at his absolute peak as a dunker remains fantastic. It was certainly his time to shine, at age 27 and after having watched All-Star Julius Erving steal his thunder as the ABA dunk champ the year before.
Especially on the 1977 championship stage, in front of a packed house at Memorial Coliseum, in a week best known for Bill Walton’s move to provide Portland with its only NBA title to date (and the resultant 1977 Kemper Open).
The search for further information took us all the way back to the famed APBR.org forums, a go-to haven for any hoops fan with an internet connection from the mid-2000s, and sportswriter Brett Ballantini’s feature on the event:
Fans most enjoyed [Hillman’s] Rock the Cradle, but there were several moves that Hillman wished he could have shown off in the competition. Back in high school, Hillman had developed The Hammer, where he stuck the ball in his left armpit, leaped up to the rim, and punched the ball through the rim with his right hand. And his favorite Indiana crowd-pleaser was even less of a true dunk: Palming the ball and sticking it completely through the rim up to his armpit, then withdrawing his arm, all while hanging in the air. And he was dusting off a 360-degree dunk for the final, but decided against the move as too risky.
Hillman also managed to use the fact that the slam dunk final was relegated to NBA Finals sideshow to his advantage: “It heightened the excitement, actually. To be at the Finals in any way was a thrill. I was competing on behalf of my team, so even though Indiana wasn’t in the playoffs or the Finals, somebody from the team had something to win on that day.”
Win he did, convincingly. And ironically, arguably the most exhausting, thorough, and challenging slam dunk contest in basketball history remains almost completely unacknowledged by the NBA.
No plaque, no banners (even in Indianapolis, where the Pacers’ Fieldhouse stands as a spectacular museum of sorts for ABA and NBA history), few anecdotes and, as we’ve learned, no trophy until Wednesday.
The NBA would go on to create the Dunk Contest as we now know it – a league-wide collection of talents not limited to All-Stars, scoring bounding up to 50, performed on the day before the All-Star Game – in 1984, with Erving failing to defend his 1976 title against champion Larry Nance, and Hillman (who retired after nine ABA and NBA seasons in 1980) not participating. The contest, as you probably noted in February, has posted its high and low marks in the years (save for two misses during the fin de siècle) since.
Grading on a curve due to age, we’d give Darnell Hillman’s dunks a series of 10s with a few 9s sprinkled in here and there. After 40 years of waiting out that trophy, we’d give the man’s approach to patience a perfect score.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
