If Justin Melton were a reasonable person, he would not have won the 2014 Philippines Basketball Association's slam dunk contest. He probably wouldn't be playing professional basketball at all, because he is 5'9". But Justin Melton is unreasonable in the way that professional athletes must be, and has the career to prove it—he played four years at Division II University of Mount Olive, then parlayed that into a pair of vaguely Spud Webb-ish seasons in the Philippines Basketball Association and one definitely Spud Webb-ish slam dunk championship. Justin Melton has a professional basketball career because he does not acknowledge his limitations.
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It's an admirable thing. But also Justin Melton is a human being, and human beings do not have the strongest track record where blindfolded slam dunk attempts go. Cedric Ceballos won the 1992 NBA Slam Dunk Contest with a successful blindfolded dunk, and you can read a description of it here. Justin Melton did not win the 2015 PBA slam dunk contest with a blindfolded dunk because, after his teammate tied a jersey around his head, Justin Melton took a few bounding steps, leapt into the air, and slammed the ball into the court about five feet shy of the basket. You can see that above.In what has already been an amazing year for failed slam dunk attempts from the Far East, Melton managed the seemingly impossible. He did this not by dunking a basketball while blindfolded—if you're just joining us, that definitely is not how this went—but by authoring a dunk attempt that is more poignant and hilarious than the ultra-failed attempt to dunk over five people that so amused Stephon Marbury at the Chinese Basketball Association dunk contest.Where that dunk was a soaring and beautiful testimony to the beauty of delusion—a short, floppy-haired dude really believed he was going to go flying over five adult men and dunk a basketball, like a dang NBA Jam character—Melton's is a more provocative, entirely darker piece of art. There is delusion here, too—to be clear: this whole attempt is hilariously, wonderfully deluded—but there is also an element of performance art to it, a sort of commentary on and reflection of the dark comedy of the human condition. We, Justin Melton and all the rest of us, run in the dark; we leap not knowing where we'll land, we fire out with maximum force because there is nothing else to do, we land secure in the (extremely wrong) belief that we've hit the mark, because that is what we need to believe. There is a beautifully bright-sided futility to the attempt; there is even some grace in it.This is a dunk that belongs in the Whitney Biennial, in other words. It should be purchased for millions of dollars, be installed briefly in some wealthy person's private collection—the collector will admire it, regularly, swirling a cognac and purring "exquisite" as it loops—and then be donated to a museum. All will be able to see it, free of charge, and lines of children and adults will move through the gallery daily. They will say "that dunk, there: that is us."And they'll laugh, too, because holy shit, wow. Wow, this dunk.(H/T to Lukey Bonner/SB Nation.)