Dunks or no, Darrell Griffith still Dr. Dunkenstein

By his own estimate, Darrell Griffith has not dunked a basketball in 20 years.

Dr. Dunkenstein operates almost exclusively on ground level these days, his airborne acrobatics reduced to reminiscences by gravitational pull and Father Time. Though the image of him in low orbit remains frozen across five stories of the Watterson City Building on Bishop Lane, the real-life Griffith is 55 years old and acts his age.

"Once I left the game and I looked back at my career, I said to myself, 'Job well done,' and moved on to the next phase of my life," the University of Louisville's career scoring leader said Wednesday afternoon. "I played in some leagues with some guys 35 and over (and) I noticed I was trying to do stuff I couldn't do. I don't want to get hurt."

He was seated serenely at the end of a campus conference table, fielding questions in observance of his latest feat: election to the Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in Kansas City. He looked lean enough to leap tall buildings at a single bound or, at least, to help U of L in Friday's NCAA Tournament game against Kentucky.

But when asked how close he could come to the 48-inch vertical he achieved as a high school player trying out for the 1976 U.S. Olympic team, Griffith chose to be coy rather than candid.

"I wouldn't want to measure it because I wouldn't want to taint my image," he said, smiling. "I'll stay with the 48 and thanks for the memories."

As the Male High School phenom who promised Louisville its first NCAA championship and then delivered it in 1980, Griffith had a career remembered mainly with reverence in his hometown. He scored 2,333 points before college basketball's adoption of the 3-point shot, and he subsequently expanded his shooting range to become the NBA's leading 3-point shooter.

His number 35 has been retired by both his alma mater and the NBA's Utah Jazz, and it falls somewhere between an oversight and an outrage that he has yet to be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Griffith was that good. Nearly 23 years since his last professional game, he will periodically participate in shooting contests just to "let 'em know the jump shot still lives," but he's seen too many of his contemporaries get injured in past-prime competition to risk the rigors of a full-court game.

"I still can shoot," he said "You've got to get your legs underneath you, but once you get going, anything can happen. Ask Angel (McCoughtry). Me and Angel, when she was (at U of L), I had to do something at Freedom Hall. She said, 'Come on, let's play a game of H-O-R-S-E.' "

Griffith accepted the challenge but insisted on time to warm up.

"We had a challenging game," he recalled. "It was great."

"Who won?" he was asked.

"I did."

At the top of his game, Griffith was challenged almost constantly, and he traveled regionally in search of better competition. His West End neighborhood was teeming with talent — "There were about seven guys in a four-block area who went to the Final Four," he said — and he wonders if current players spend too much time with PlayStation and not enough on the playgrounds.

"Guys from my era, we shake our heads," he said. "The talent level, the interest level is just not the same. ... It's kind of sad to see the state of high school basketball with sporadic talent in this city."

To see Louisville produce another basketball player like Darrell Griffith might require more years than most of us have left. Dr. Dunkenstein is earthbound now, but his stature still soars.

— Tim Sullivan