Darvin Ham on Sports Illustrated

Throughout the Big Dance we’re going to bring you first-hand Tournament accounts from the ballplayers who have actually been there: guys who have won national championships, who have played in classic games, who have been involved in some monumental upsets, and who have made some unforgettable plays.

The image of Ham under a shower of glass became one of Sports Illustrated’s most iconic cover shots of the ’90s, and boosted Ham’s profile individually. Although undrafted that year, he made the Nuggets roster as a free agent and carved out an eight-year career in the League with Denver, Indiana, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Detroit, winning a championship with the Pistons in ‘04. Now 34 years old, Ham is currently playing for the Albuquerque Thunderbirds of the NBA’s D-League. Here he talks about making a play that will be on the highlight reel forever…

“We ran the table in the Southwest Conference that year. We finished that season 28-1; we only lost to Eastern Michigan, who had Earl Boykins. Other than that, we were a really dominant team. We had Jason Sasser, Tony Battie, Cory Carr, who was drafted by the Bulls, Koy Smith, who could shoot the lights out, and our point guard Jason Martin, he led the nation in assist-to-turnover margin. We were real good that year. We were a band of brothers in every sense of the word.

“We had a real solid team going in, but we got some first-game jitters and squeaked past Northern Illinois by two. So we’re sitting up watching the tournament shows, and Dick Vitale and Digger Phelps, they were killing us. They said we didn’t have a chance, that we’d fold under the pressure, that being live on TV against North Carolina would be too much for us to overcome. My brother and my cousin were in the hotel with us, and my cousin was like, ‘Man, did you hear that? They totally disrespected you guys! You should dunk on those fools, tear the damn backboard down!’ I definitely planned on dunking on somebody.

“North Carolina, they had Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Shammond Williams…just pros. You know the history and legacy there; it’s goes without being said. They’re arguably the best program in the history of college basketball. But never once did we look at that team in awe. We were so hell-bent on repping where we were from — repping Texas, more specifically, Lubbock, Texas. We came in ready to represent the Red Raiders. We had to prove to the world we belonged, and we were the three-seed! That was our mindset. We shaved our heads bald — Tony Battie didn’t shave his head ’cause he thought it might look funny — but everyone shaved their heads and we went into that game totally psyched. We were ready to kill and destroy.

“Before the play where I broke the backboard, we were down 16-14. We’d traded baskets going back and forth. Jason Martin set a play up and threw it to the left block to Jason Sasser. He was backing down Antawn Jamison. Vince Carter was guarding me and went over to double team Sass. When you play with a guy for so long, you learn how their shot comes off the rim. I knew that a lot of Sass’ shots were off the back-iron and got a real good spin, so they’d hit the rim and go straight up. He threw up a jumper and Vince had gone to double-team, so that left me a clear shot down the lane at an offensive rebound. Once that shot went up I was like a raging bull, like a madman. Antawn and Serge Zwikker were there, and I came over their backs and threw it down. I went to pull away and I heard this crack, and I felt the rim give way more than it was supposed to give. I had dunked a lot of basketballs way harder than that one, so I don’t know why the glass broke. It was just an act of God.

“And you can print this: I gave urine samples that were totally clean after the game. There wasn’t any HGH involved, no BALCO labs that I got any packages from. That was just meat and veggies. It was all due to God and Texas Tech strength-and-conditioning.

“When I realized what I did, it was like ‘Wow, dude.’ It was crazy. I was walking toward their bench yelling and screaming, and I still remember the looks on their faces. I remember looking at Dean Smith’s face — it was a look of shock and awe. It was like he’d seen something he’d never seen before.

“There was a stoppage in play for about 40-45 minutes. The glass being shattered, it had fell on a couple of us. Serge and Antawn were cut, and my right arm was bleeding. When I got in the locker room I saw I had a few more scratches. I had to take a shower to get the glass particles from my back and change jerseys, ’cause I had some blood on my jersey.

“We knew the only thing we had to do was jump on top of them; it was like they were mystified by what happened. Coming out the break, Cory Carr had four threes and busted the game wide open. We won by about 20.

“When you’re in that moment, it’s like ‘BAM!’ and then everything happens so fast. The dunk itself felt like slow motion, but once I hit it, everything was so fast. I was just as shocked as anybody, but I made sure I could at least fake it — make it look like I meant to do it.

“Our next game was in Atlanta, in the Georgia Dome against Georgetown with Allen Iverson, Jerome Williams, Othella Harrington, Victor Page…they had a great team. After practice one day we were going to get something to eat, me and Jason Martin. Our sports information director, Kelly Robinson, he came up to us outside the hotel looking like Inspector Gadget, like he was hiding from somebody. He’s like, “Yo, you gotta see this, but both of you can’t tell anybody!” He pulls out a yellow envelope and he had one of the copies of the Sports Illustrated cover before it came out, the picture of me breaking the glass. That’s when I was like, ‘This is really big.’ It was pretty amazing.

“Unfortunately we lost to Georgetown by like six or eight points, but we gave everybody something to remember. Whenever they talk about the NCAA Tournament they’ll talk about that play. I think it definitely let people know who I was. I worked out for the Miami Heat and for Houston before the draft. I ended up with Denver’s summer league team. I caught their eye and got my first NBA job.”