One of the lost charms of basketball is the broken backboard. It’s probably because I came of basketball age in the 1990s when Shaq was shattering ‘boards and the culmination of any NBA JAM session came when you busted the backboard in the fourth quarter, but there’s just something awesome and romantic about the broken backboard.
Thanks to new stanchion technology, though, it’s become mostly a thing of the past.
Unless you’re hanging out at St. Louis practice, apparently.
Carte’Are Gordon, a 2018 top-100 recruit set to begin his Billikens career this winter, threw down a monster dunk that shattered a backboard during St. Louis practice.
.@CoachTFord5 said #TeamBlue is going to be bigger, stronger and more powerful, but 😳😳😳.
— Saint Louis Men's Basketball (@SaintLouisMBB) September 6, 2018
(Carte’Are is OK. The backboard? Not so much.) #Billikens 🔵⚪️ pic.twitter.com/8ac9q5yWmO
What a thing of beauty that left a mess in its wake.
The aftermath... pic.twitter.com/XRlgGc2E7z
— Saint Louis Men's Basketball (@SaintLouisMBB) September 6, 2018
We may never see this in an honest-to-goodness game ever again, but every periodic reminder of how just amazingly cool a dunk that breaks a backboard is, well sign me up for that.