Paul Watson remembers the first time he dunked a basketball. As he caught an alley oop in his eighth grade gym class and flushed it through the basket, it became clear that he wasn’t an ordinary ballplayer. Even after his two feet landed firmly on the hardwood, he couldn’t explain what he’d just accomplished.
“Everyone was kind of in awe and so was I,” said Watson, who was 5-foot-10 at the time. “We didn’t really know exactly what happened.”
Watson has come a long way since that middle school slam, but dunking has always been a special part of his relationship with basketball.