Jerome Lane's rim-rattling, glass-breaking dunk still a grand slam 35 years later
Jerome Lane, a player who dominated Big East backboards for two seasons, said his legendary slam was “just another dunk.”
The only difference?
“Just the glass coming down,” he said.
Oh, is that all?
The dunk occurred Jan. 25, 1988, in Pitt’s Big East game against Providence at Fitzgerald Field House. It will be celebrated on its 35th anniversary Wednesday night at Petersen Events Center on “Send It In, Jerome Night” before and during the Wake Forest game.
No matter what Lane said, the dunk was so extraordinary that the rim was ripped from the backboard and hung precariously as if it would fall at any moment. On impact, shards of glass exploded onto the court.
The standing-room-only crowd erupted with a loud, startled, sustained roar, and Roc, Pitt’s mascot, eventually retrieved the broken rim, hoisted it high and triumphantly paraded around the Field House with it.
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Said Lane teammate Jason Matthews on a YouTube video: “When Jerome broke the backboard, it literally sounded like someone threw a brick through a huge, glass window.”
No one was injured, although Providence’s Carlton Screen, who tried to take the charge but instead was called for a foul, was knocked to the floor by the 6-foot-6, 230-pound Lane.
After accepting congratulatory high-fives from his teammates, Lane said he found glass fragments in his head. A trainer was summoned to pick them out safely.
ESPN color analyst Bill Raftery responded on air with his unforgettable call, “Send it in, Jerome.”
Related:
• 25 years later: Send it in, Jerome!
Pitt booster Dr. James Barber, who purchased the playing floor at the Field House, was in attendance that night just like he has been for every home game and most on the road since 1985.
“The world stopped,” Barber said. “Everybody was looking at each other (and saying), ‘You have to be kidding me? What do we do now? Are they going to fix this? Is the game over?’
“It was an incredibly exciting night. Jerome was the only one who could do it. You know how he attacked the bucket. He was just a beast on the boards.”
The game was delayed 30 minutes, throwing off ESPN’s programming schedule, until a maintenance crew could get another backboard in place.
The play started innocently enough when freshman point guard Sean Miller, now the head coach at No. 13 Xavier, picked up a loose ball at the other end of the floor.
With Demetreus Gore on his left and Lane on his right, Miller led the 3-on-1 fast break, slipping the ball to Lane a second before he rose toward the rim.
“Perfect timing,” Miller said Friday when queried by reporters in Cincinnati. “It’s really a great play to be a part of, because it lasts a lifetime. The clip is going to come up at least once a year. I think it’s the greatest dunk of all-time.”
Lane, 56, still lives in his native Akron, Ohio, and said he has seen the video dozens of times.
“Every time I see somebody, they show it,” he said. “I bet they show me that dunk at least 20, 30 times a year, like I’ve never seen it.”
It wasn’t the first time a backboard was damaged and needed to be replaced.
• Former ABA and Pittsburgh Condors star Charlie “Helicopter” Hentz pulled down two backboards on opposite ends of the court in the same game in Raleigh, N.C., in 1970.
• Chuck Connors, who played for the Boston Celtics and went on to become “The Rifleman” on TV, broke a poorly installed backboard in pregame warmups in 1946 by shooting a basketball against the front of the rim.
• Philadelphia 76ers center Darryl Dawkins shattered a backboard in Kansas City in 1979.
Rims today are more flexible, and Lane, a first-round draft choice of the Denver Nuggets, doesn’t remember seeing any similar incidents during his five-season NBA career.
“There were some high flyers, but I never seen anybody bring the rim down,” he said. “They had to do some type of improvement.”
That moment in 1988 is how most people remember Lane, but that’s not as it should be, Miller said. Lane was a two-time Pitt All-American who grabbed 970 career rebounds (third all-time) and scored 1,217 points.
“The only thing that I don’t like about the play itself,” Miller said, “I think sometimes it takes away from how great a college player Jerome was. Sometimes, when you think of Jerome, you think of the dunk when, in fairness to him, it’s his career that you really should think about.”
As a sophomore in 1986, Lane became the shortest player in 30 years to lead the NCAA in rebounding (13.5 per game), and he led the Big East for two consecutive seasons, the first to do so.
“You never even hear I was the leading rebounder in college,” Lane said. “The only thing they know is the dunk. I bet some of the people in Akron don’t even know I was a two-time All-American.”
Pitt’s 1987-88 team (24-7, 12-4) was one of the best in school history, winning the Big East regular-season championship and earning a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Charles Smith joined Lane as two-time All-Americans and Miller’s 744 career assists are second only to Brandin Knight.
That was the season Pitt lost to Vanderbilt in the second round of the tournament after the Commodores’ Barry Goheen’s buzzer-beater sent the game into overtime.
The loss still stings, and Lane contends it could have been avoided. Lane said then-Pitt assistant John Calipari suggested to coach Paul Evans to press the Commodores before the pass to Goheen.
“Evans told him to shut up,” Lane said. “If we had pressed like Calipari said, he would have never got that off. (Evans) told us to get back to half-court. They threw one pass to half-court and he took one dribble and threw it up.”
Jeff Capel on Jerome Lane’s grand slam … pic.twitter.com/jFOkdNYyyd
— Jerry DiPaola (@JDiPaola_Trib) January 23, 2023
Kansas beat Vanderbilt in the next game 77-64 and went on to win the national championship. Pitt had defeated the Jayhawks the previous season, and there were those who believed the Panthers had enough talent to make a run to the ‘88 title.
“I know we could have beat them again,” Lane said.
Lane, who was inducted into the Pitt Athletics Hall of Fame last year, will sign autographs Wednesday before the game, joined by his daughter, Jasmine, who lives in the area and runs a babysitting concierge service in South Fayette.
There’s one more serendipitous connection between Lane and the dunk.
Jerome’s son, Jerome Jr., who played football at Akron, now lives in — of all places — Providence, R.I.
Jerry DiPaola is a TribLive reporter covering Pitt athletics since 2011. A Pittsburgh native, he joined the Trib in 1993, first as a copy editor and page designer in the sports department and later as the Pittsburgh Steelers reporter from 1994-2004. He can be reached at jdipaola@triblive.com.
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