#6: The Lew Alcindor Rule and the Dunk Ban
For nine seasons, college basketball had no dunks at all. The ban began before the 1967-68 season, just as UCLA’s Lew Alcindor (A.K.A. Kareem Abdul Jabbar) was establishing how unfair a seven-foot-two center with extraordinary coordination could make the game look. He had already led the Bruins to the national championship as a sophomore, and the NCAA’s own historical coverage has described the change as an attempt to slow him down. Contemporary explanations also spoke about keeping basketball from becoming too dependent on height and preserving a wider variety of skills.
