NBA: Remembering That Time Shaq Disrespected Chris Dudley

He may not have flown through the air, but Shaquille O’Neal’s dunk on Chris Dudley in 1999 is still one of the most disrespectful ones in NBA history.

If you follow the NBA and NBA Twitter, you’re probably aware of Shea Serrano. Tuesday, Serrano wrote about The Disrespectful Dunk Index, a metric he created to classify how disrespectful NBA dunks are.

Serrano looked exclusively at newer dunks, but the first dunk that comes to mind every time I hear the word disrespectful happened way back in 1999. The New York Knicks were visiting the Los Angeles Lakers in a lockout-shortened year and both teams were pretty good.

The Lakers had Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant and the Knicks had Patrick Ewing and some other good players. They also had Chris Dudley, who is important in this story for a sad reason.

It was a close game in the fourth quarter, with the Lakers only leading by three points. There was bad blood between these two teams, and tensions flared early with Kurt Thomas getting ejected for taking the fight to Dennis Rodman, who was somehow with the Lakers that season.

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Then, this happened:

Let’s put it through Serrano’s Disrespectful Dunk Index.

Difficulty/Impressiveness:

Some people might say this wasn’t that impressive of a dunk because Shaq doesn’t really get all that high in the air. Those people are wrong. Although he may look it standing next to (and under) Shaq, Chris Dudley is not in fact a small human.

Dunker’s Reaction:

After completing this monster slam, Shaq immediately moves from dunk mode into reaction mode. Although he clearly had a lot of momentum going, I would assume there were options he had besides to pelvic thrust Dudley in the chest on his way down.

And even if there weren’t, there were certainly options available to Shaq that did not involve him pushing Dudley to the ground with a flourish. He could’ve made sure his soul was still in fact in his body and that he hadn’t physically broken Dudley with the aforementioned pelvic thrust.

But instead he pushes him, gracefully almost with the flourish at the end, and simply jogs back down the court. Dudley is so incensed by this he picks up the basketball and throws it, striking Shaq in the posterior previously used to create the space for the dunk in the first place.

An aside: although one never looks good throwing a basketball in rage, either in a pickup game or in the NBA, Dudley deserves credit for throwing this thing beautifully.

I mean, he absolutely nails Shaq with it, and although there’s no easier target to hit in terms of pure mass than Shaq, it’s still tough to do at that speed with a basketball.

The disrespect shown by Shaq here, both in executing the dunk and the just plain mean follow-up, that was then compounded by him jogging away as though he hadn’t just obliterated a man, deserves as much score on a disrespect index as can be given. 20/20.

Defense:

Dudley was defending Shaq the entire way and was at most six inches or so away when Shaq started to leave the ground for the dunk. He was there the whole way through, which counts as defense … even if it was completely futile defense.

Dudley’s life depended on stopping that dunk; he just couldn’t do it. 20/20.

Backstory:

The Knicks had already seen Kurt Thomas get ejected for fighting Rodman in this game, and Ewing had picked up a technical for arguing with referees after he elbowed Rodman.

More than that, Shaq had blasted Ewing earlier in the year for his role in the just-signed NBA collective bargaining agreement. So although Dudley and Shaq may not have had much of a relationship before that, these teams had a lot of bad blood.

Dudley and Shaq had played against each other before, several times actually, but nothing much pops up on Google in terms of a feud between the two of them. Aside from this dunk, of course.

Still, the fact that there were fights in this game already make the backstory at least worth something. 12/15.

Cleanliness:

That ball does not touch the rim. It glides through almost as effortlessly as Shaq motors through Chris Dudley. 5/5.

Reaction:

Dudley’s reaction to this doesn’t count since he was involved with the dunk, but his reaction almost causes a brawl between the two teams. Amazingly, somehow the world goes not explode when the dunk occurs.

The Los Angeles crowd loses it and roars for the duration of the YouTube clip, but the Lakers don’t really react until after Dudley throws the ball. That’s a shameful lack of chemistry on the part of Frobe and the rest of the Lakers.

It doesn’t ruin the dunk per se, but there are certainly points lost for the lack of reaction from players until a fight almost breaks out. Interestingly enough, Dudley actually gets penalized harder than Shaq.

He gets thrown out of the game, whereas Shaq just gets a technical foul for his extra shoving.

Still, the weak celebration by the Lakers is going to cost this dunk some points. You can only barely see the end of the bench in the last few seconds of the video, but they don’t even look that pumped.

Maybe it was the serious nature of the game, but a dunk that earth-shattering needs to be properly recognized. 10/20.

Shaq’s dunk on Chris Dudley is thus 85 percent disrespectful. That’s pretty disrespectful, but the NBA can do better.

More from Hoops Habit

The backstory is a very important aspect, as are the bench celebrations. The best beef in the NBA right now is doubtlessly between Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, who still have three games against each other remaining this year.

Durant dunking on Westbrook could be very disrespectful, but so could Westbrook dunking on Durant. Unfortunately for Westbrook, his top dunk celebrator, Cameron Payne, is currently out indefinitely.

Still, Westbrook dunks much harder than Durant usually does. There’s also more reason for him to want to destroy KD–his Oklahoma City Thunder likely aren’t going to the NBA Finals, while Durant’s Golden State Warriors are the favorites to win them.

Durant has more to worry about than just getting revenge–he has high standards set. Warriors fans want another title. Thunder fans want to see Westbrook overpower Durant and make him reconsider his life choices in a very real sense.

Their first matchup wasn’t close enough near the end for an impressive dunk to be 100 percent disrespectful, but NBA fans will get three more opportunities to hope for the most disrespectful dunk of all-time to occur.

Next: 25 Greatest Dunkers In NBA History

Until then, Shaq annihilating Chris Dudley will remain in contention for the top spot.