YouTube Gold: Phi Slama Jama Dunks All Over Louisville In The 1983 Semifinals

People still talk about that night in Albuquerque

When Guy Lewis coached Houston, part of his tenure overlapped with a glorious era of Southwestern Conference basketball: while much of the Southern basketball powers - Kentucky, Duke, UNC and NC State - had not integrated. The Southwestern Conference and schools in the region were much more willing to integrate and as a result, basketball in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Kansas, and we’re including JUCOs here, developed in a very different way than it did in the Deep South. White southerners often dismissed the much faster Southwestern style of the 1960’s as undisciplined, but over time it would emerge as the prototype of where basketball was going. Lewis and Houston were a huge part of that.

Lewis’s first truly great team in the late ‘60’s starred Elvin Hayes and Don Chaney, both of whom hailed from Louisiana.

By the time the core of his second great team arrived, the southern schools were integrated. In fact, the Final Four that year consisted of Houston, Louisville, Georgia and NC State.

Houston played Louisville in the semifinals that year in perhaps the second most iconic Final Four game up to that point behind Texas Western’s 1966 drive to the national championship as the first team with five black starters.

Houston put on an aerial assault that people still talk about. There were reports that Louisville’s bench went to the monitor to watch the dunks replayed.

It was a jaw-dropping performance by Phi Slama Jama.

Of course, on the following Monday, NC State held Houston to zero dunks in a stunning upset to win the 1983 title, In fact, we believe that the only dunk the entire game was the game-winner by Lorenzo Charles.

This year’s Houston team is not the same at all. Kelvin Sampson has a group who are much better together than they are separately. However, we’re still talking about Phi Slama Jama 42 years later.