A lot of us may not know the story of the first recorded dunk in organized basketball.
A 6-foot-8 Texan by the name of Joe Fortenberry stunned the crowd at the 1936 Berlin Olympics when he pulled off the move and helped the US men’s national team snag the gold medal. Nearly 10 years later, Bob Kurland became the first college student to slam the ball through the basket when he spontaneously performed his own dunk during an NCAA game.
In these early days, the dunk was considered too flashy and disrespectful to the opponent. While shades of that attitude still exist in both the men’s and women’s game today, the dunk has evolved over the decades into a move that is nearly ubiquitous.
It would be three decades before a women’s basketball player would dunk. But when it happened, it happened in spectacular fashion. Approximately 20 years before the founding of the WNBA, there was the WBL (Women’s Professional Basketball League), which was established in 1978 and lasted until 1981. Cardte Hicks, who was born and raised near Los Angeles and played for the WBL’s San Francisco Pioneers, became the first woman to dunk in a professional game.
Hicks later told Las Vegas’ CBS News 8, “Women, young girls at the…
