The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
The slam dunk shot in basketball was invented by Joe Fortenberry of Happy, Texas. Joe, who was born in 1911 and died in 1993, was 6'7" tall. He was a basketball player who competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics and was captain of the American basketball team, which won the first gold medal awarded in basketball. Joe played two games at the Olympics, including the final. He was the high scorer in the gold medal game, scoring 8 points in a 19–8 victory, and averaged a tournament-leading 14.5 points per game. That game was held in appalling conditions, outdoors on a muddy clay court, that made dribbling almost impossible, in steady rain and with winds that "blew the ball around wildly. Anyway, to the point, Joe is credited as being the first to slam dunk a basketball when a New York Times article by Pulitzer Prize winning sports reporter Arthur Daily in 1936 made note of the fact that Joe did it during a game. According to Joe's son, he could still dunk a basketball when he was in his mid-50s. After he played in the Olympics, Fortenberry played five seasons with the Phillips 66ers, the perennial power in the AAU basketball league, the premier basketball league in the United States before the NBA. He played from the 1936–1937 season through the 1940–1941 season, winning an AAU national championship in 1940. He is shown here in his Phillips 66 uniform.
The slam dunk shot in basketball was invented by Joe Fortenberry of Happy, Texas. Joe, who was born in 1911 and died in 1993, was 6'7" tall. He was a basketball player who competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics and was captain of the American basketball team, which won the first gold medal awarded in basketball. Joe played two games at the Olympics, including the final. He was the high scorer in the gold medal game, scoring 8 points in a 19–8 victory, and averaged a tournament-leading 14.5 points per game. That game was held in appalling conditions, outdoors on a muddy clay court, that made dribbling almost impossible, in steady rain and with winds that "blew the ball around wildly. Anyway, to the point, Joe is credited as being the first to slam dunk a basketball when a New York Times article by Pulitzer Prize winning sports reporter Arthur Daily in 1936 made note of the fact that Joe did it during a game. According to Joe's son, he could still dunk a basketball when he was in his mid-50s. After he played in the Olympics, Fortenberry played five seasons with the Phillips 66ers, the perennial power in the AAU basketball league, the premier basketball league in the United States before the NBA. He played from the 1936–1937 season through the 1940–1941 season, winning an AAU national championship in 1940. He is shown here in his Phillips 66 uniform.
