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Reese Avoids Funk After Missing Dunk

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It was good, you know.

“It was?” Brian Reese asked.

Yeah. You got it off in time.

“I did?” Reese asked.

That isn’t what his coach told him. Dean Smith had let the North Carolina basketball player off the hook. He had reassured Reese that the dunk he skunked at the end of Sunday’s NCAA East Regional championship game wouldn’t have counted anyway, that North Carolina still would have needed to go into overtime to defeat Cincinnati. So forget it, he said.

“OK, so I gave the kid an out,” the coach confessed.

After all, Reese’s miss could have left his school’s season in pieces.

Family and friends from his old neighborhood in the Bronx were among the capacity crowd of 19,761 at the Meadowlands. Many were standing and some were praying with eight-10ths of a second remaining in regulation play. North Carolina was inbounding the ball from beneath its basket. The score was tied, 66-66. To be among the Final Four or not to be, that was the question.

Reese, a junior in school and a reader of Shakespeare, knew he had precious little time. Anything he could do, ‘twas better it were done quickly. You could scarcely snap your fingers in eight-10ths of a second, much less shoot a basketball into a basket.

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“Coach told me just tap it,” Reese said.

But something happened. No one from Cincinnati came near him. Everyone else was guarded or double-teamed. Derrick Phelps, his old friend from Queens, was as amazed as anyone to notice Reese all by himself in the lane. There he was, maybe six or seven feet in front of the hoop. Easy pickings.

Phelps passed Reese the ball. He could have tapped it, but it would have been a pretty long tap. He had time to catch it. He even came down for a landing.

“I was so open,” Reese said, “I just had to try to shoot it.”

“Probably out of habit,” Smith interjected.

With a full-stride lunge, Reese went for the rim-rammer. For the old highest-percentage shot. He was a 6-foot-6 forward who could fly with the eagles. Even the back cover of the Carolina team yearbook is a full-page photograph of Reese dunking.

Up went the Tar Heel. Down went the ball. The rim bent. The horn blew. The ball vibrated back and forth like a pinball between bumpers. Then it popped out.

Carolina players lay face-forward on the floor in front of the bench. An assistant coach, Randy Wiel, sprang three feet into the air and came down with a stomp. Players covered their faces with their palms. Their deadly enemy, Duke, had won the 1992 East Regional title on a last-second miracle shot by Christian Laettner. Would Carolina now lose the 1993 title on a missed dunk?

Reese thought not.

“Coach said it wouldn’t have counted anyway.”

Others thought likewise.

Tom Hathaway, sports information director for Cincinnati, said he was informed by officials that Reese’s shot was released after the horn.

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But according to eyewitnesses, one official, Jody Silvester, told the official scorer at the time that the shot would have counted.

TV replays were inconclusive. No game official was shown whirling his arm to count the shot. And none was made available after the game because tournament officials, emphasizing that Reese’s team won, considered the matter academic.

Sure it was. But that made it no less interesting. It was an NCAA tournament moment. Ten years ago, North Carolina State won a national championship with such a moment.

And what a moment in the life of Brian Reese, who could have remembered and regretted it forever had North Carolina lost. He already has had so much on his mind. The grandmother who raised him recently died. The asthma that takes his breath away continues to sap his stamina. And then, to live with this?

Brian Reese is a sensitive kid. He reads the Bible for hours on end. Once asked to name the best thing he has ever read, other than the Bible, Reese replied: “Macbeth.”

The youngest of 10 children, he was happy to be back in the New York area so that they could come see him play.

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Maybe that’s why Reese’s eyes opened round as basketballs when word got back to him about the dunk.

For 30 minutes of work, about all he had to show was eight points and five turnovers. Thank goodness his team won.

“Oh, man, am I ever lucky,” Reese said. “North Carolina might not have let me back into the state.”

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