NBA.com
By Charles Bethea
Thirteen-and-a-half feet tall and 18,500 pounds of granite? Sounds about right. The fact that the long-awaited statue of Jacques Dominique Wilkins can’t fly, well…that’s the only unrealistic part as far as I’m concerned.
Let’s begin at the beginning. Where did this man come from? I haven’t obtained his birth certificate, but let’s assume that he was born the normal, natural way – in France of all places. He was an Air Force kid, with added emphasis on the air part. From Paris, his family moved to Baltimore, MD. There wasn’t much grass to play on where he lived, so he chose the concrete courts. He knew he’d be a pro by the time he was 12. Twelve!
When he was 16, he moved to Washington, NC, just up the coast from Wilmington, where a fella named Michael Jordan was dribbling balls and stretching himself on chin-up bars. Wilkins grew from 6’3″ to 6’8″ in the course of his tenth grade summer. He went 76-1 at Washington High and accidentally set the school record in the quarter mile (48 seconds), because there was no one else to run it that particular day. Drool from NBA scouts drained into the Pamlico River.
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