Basketball's Top 10 Slam Dunkers

* Reviews *

Fun for sports fans who love statistics, the Top 10 Sports Stars series reports on outstanding players in baseball, football, and basketball. After a brief introduction explaining the team position and reviewing changes through the years, each volume focuses on all-time heroes of a sport. Most exciting of all shots is the slam dunk; the ten stars presented here are master dunkers. From the games earlier days comes Bill Russell (pioneer African-American player), whose rivalry with Wilt Chamberlain was a fiercely competitive match-up. Julius Erving delighted in inventing creative, entertaining slam dunks, while Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was such a furious dunker that the shot was banned for a time (he developed his sky hook instead). Two offbeat players are Darryl Dawkins (who shattered two backboards, causing the NBA to install breakaway rims) and Paris-born Dominique Wilkins (twice All-Star Slam Dunk Champion). Another feared slam dunker is Nigerian Hakeem Olajuon, MVP and six-time NBA First Team selection. More recently, the brilliant Michael Jordan earned further acclaim with a spectacular leap to beat Wilkins in the Slam Dunk contest of 1988; two years later, Vince Carter won the contest despite a finger injury (at a Summer Olympics, he jumped over a tall Frenchman to make the famous dunk de la mort). Other renowned dunkers are huge Shaquille ONeal, who powered both the Lakers and the Miami Heat to championships, and the agile LeBron James, who can do everything and continues to play. With action photos and a statistics box to help, readers get a career overview of each record-holder, award-winner or Hall-of-Famer—devoted fans can learn more from brief bibliographies and Internet addresses., Children's Literature