Legendary Dunker Basil Hampton of Jackson Named to Gus Macker Hall of Fame

    BELDING, Mich. -- The overflow crowd pushed closer and closer, excited, energized and spilling on to the court at the Gatorade Gus Macker Tournament Dunk Contest in Belding in 1989.

  Basil Hampton, also known as “Doc Rise,” felt claustrophobic. He looked around and thought to himself that he didn’t have room to dunk.

  “You couldn’t even move,” he said. “We moved people so we could get a lane to run to the basket for the dunk and there really wasn’t enough room for that. It was mobbed. It was so big. It was loud. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

   Hampton estimates with dunk contests on the Macker World Tour and dunk contests put on by other groups he competed in as many as 125 contests during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In one year on the Gus Macker World Tour he said he won 17 dunk contests – consecutively.

   Steve Prawdzik, a marketing company owner (Project Marketing) from Grand Rapids who worked with Gus Macker Basketball at the time, embarked on a campaign in 1990 to get Basil in the NBA Dunk Contest on NBA All-Star Weekend as the “people’s choice, regular-guy, Rocky kind of guy dunker.” USA Today wrote a story about it, though it never came to fruition. Prawdzik was able to help get Basil in as a halftime exhibition dunk act at NBA games in Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee among others.

  “I went from Gus Macker to Gus Macker, which back then was in a lot of big markets and there would be serious competition from college players, guys that went on to the NBA, great athletes,” Hampton said. “There were a lot of other dunk contests by other people, too. I was organized and traveled from contest to contest, and then I did the shows at NBA games, too. It was a fun time, a different world. I really enjoyed it.”

   Scott McNeal, Macker owner and co-founder also known as Gus Macker, calls Basil one of a handful of many great Macker dunkers who found a way to stand out. 

  “There were maybe 10 incredible dunkers in his era or right in that time when he was dunking, and all have an argument to be in the Hall of Fame,” he said. “There was Rodney Glassnor, and Jack Kelly, and Dave Stewart, and Icy Mike. Icy Mike won a dunk contest in Belding one year that got him a small role in the movie “Heaven is a Playground.”

  “What sets Basil apart is that he had a promotional spin to him, and he made sure to hit all the big tournaments. And then he was a really flashy dunker. He was acrobatic. I always said he was like ballet in the air. The thing with Basil though was after all the spins he would really throw the dunk down with authority, too. A lot of the guys with the spins are not able to throw it down when they get up there. Basil had the ballet and the power at the end.”

  Hampton is the most recent Macker legend to be named to the Gus Macker Hall of Fame, and the fifth and final announced person or group named for induction in August in Belding during the 45th anniversary celebration of Gus Macker.

  He will be inducted with the duo of Jamey Mullen and Tom Revoir of the Norwich, N.Y., the duo of Tim “T.O.” Otteman and Dr. Lori Irwin of the Mt. Pleasant/Central Michigan University, the Ludington Macker organization and Peoria, IL, basketball legend Tony Wysinger.

  “Basil deserves to be in our Hall of Fame,” McNeal said. “He had the skills. He had a promoter. They gave out t-shirts. The other guys had an entourage, but not really like Basil. Basil’s guy did all the talking, all the arrangements. It was funny and part of the fun. It was amazing how this group of dunkers came out of our dunk contests.”

   Hampton, who will be 56 next month, is a barber and landlord in Jackson and no longer playing basketball. He was born in River Rouge, but moved as a youngster to Jackson where he grew up and has lived since. He didn’t play high school basketball because his religious family didn’t want him to follow the same athletic track as an older brother, but he did play on the playgrounds and soon realized he had a special skill.

  He was just 6-foot-1, but with a 49-inch vertical leap he could fly. And spin. And dunk.

  “I knew by the ninth grade that I had separated myself; I could clearly see that,” he said. “And you have to remember dunk contests were very popular back then. Dr. J (Julius Erving) was so big, and Michael Jordon and Dominique Wilkins were coming into the game.”

  The 1988 contest in Belding, Basil’s first with a Macker, is also an all-time Macker moment. Gatorade put up $1,000 for the winner, and the contest attracted dunkers from around the Macker World Tour.

  “Guys were dunking over shopping carts from Leppink’s, and seeing how many bodies they could jump over, things like that, and it came down to Rodney Glassnor, who was just a ferocious dunker, and Basil, who had the ballet dunks going,” McNeal said.

   “It went back and forth for a long time. Part of the crowd was chanting for Rodney, part of the crowd for Basil. They did just amazing dunks. The Gatorade guy was serving as one of the judges. Finally, he just puts his hands up, runs out on the court, grabs the microphone and announces he is going to give $1,000 to both guys. The crowd went nuts. It was a surreal moment.”

   Hampton, who later took to naming his dunks things like the GQ 360, The Statue of Liberty and the Windmill Tomahawk, said a friend mentioned the Macker dunk contest and the $1,000 prize to him just weeks before the tournament. 

  “That was a lot of money in 1988 for a dunk contest,” he said. “I said ‘you got to be kidding.’ I didn’t believe it at first.”

   After a dunk contest in Saginaw one year Basil received a letter from then-Michigan State basketball coach Jud Heathcote telling Basil “I was amazed at you.” It’s in a scrapbook now.

   “I visited Michigan State, but instead of college I decided to go overseas,” Hampton said. “I signed with the Harlem Magicians and did a tour with them to Brazil. They saw me on the front page of a newspaper winning a dunk contest on the same weekend they were in the same town, and they got in touch with me.” 

  Hampton, married for 17 years to Mia with which he has three children, Basil Jr., 15, Britton 12 and Lundon, 9, is honored to be going in the Macker Hall of Fame.

  “It’s very big to me, very humbling,” he said. “I want my kids to see it. I don’t think they really believe I did all those things or that I could play. I mean, they’ve all played in Mackers. It’s great we have one coming back to Jackson this year. There so much fun for everybody.

  “Macker has meant so much to me, and it is amazing how long it has lasted, and now I see on television there is a three-on-three league with former NBA guys and stuff, and I’m thinking that all started with Gus Macker in his driveway,” Hampton said.

   “Gus Macker is special. It’s a big deal, tournaments across the country, but in a way it’s not that far from your driveway. Anybody can be a part of it.”

2018

ON3 Hoop