Olympic gold medalists Vince Carter and Candace Parker, authors of historic dunks, and Kara Lawson are among the NBC Olympics basketball analysts in Tokyo this summer.
Carter threw down arguably the most famous dunk in global basketball history, posterizing 7-foot, 2-inch Frenchman Frederic Weis in a preliminary-round game at the 2000 Sydney Games.
The feat from the player nicknamed “Half-Man, Half-Amazing” became known as “Dunk de la mort” (Dunk of Death).
Carter’s exchange with the late Craig Sager on NBC after the game:
Sager: What were you thinking?
Carter: Put it in the hole.
Sager: You went over him though.
Carter: Put it in the hole
Carter led that U.S. Olympic team in scoring en route to the gold medal. He never played in the Olympics again and completed a 22-season NBA career last year.
Parker, who is still playing in the WNBA at age 35, earned Olympic golds in 2008 and 2012. She has quite the dunk resume, throwing it down for the first time at age 15. She first achieved national fame by winning the 2004 McDonald’s High School All-American slam dunk contest over male dunkers.
At Tennessee, she became the first woman to dunk in an NCAA Tournament game and the first woman to dunk twice in the same college game. In her 11th pro game with the Los Angeles Sparks, Parker became the second woman to dunk in a WNBA game.
Lawson, also a former Tennessee standout and 2008 Olympic champion, spent the 2019-20 NBA season as a Boston Celtics assistant coach. Now, she’s a head coach for the Duke women and an adviser for the U.S. women’s 3×3 program that qualified for the event’s Olympic debut in Tokyo.
The NBC Olympics basketball analyst team also includes Fran Fraschilla and Monica McNutt.
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