Spud Webb

He was born Anthony Jerome Webb in Dallas, Texas, on July 13, 1963. Living with his parents and five siblings in a small, three-bedroom home, he began playing basketball while still quite young, overcoming the limitations of his small stature with his uncanny ability to jump higher than the bigger kids in the neighborhood. Early in his teens, Webb, standing only four feet, 11 inches tall, found that he could dunk the basketball by hurling his small frame high into the air to bring himself closer to the basket. He would rush at the basket, push himself into the air, clearing the ground by more than four feet, and slam the basketball through the hoop.

Although Webb made it onto his junior high school basketball team, he found himself spending almost all of his time on the bench, once again hampered by his small size. When he finally convinced the coach to let him play, Webb scored twenty points in his first game. At Wilmer-Hutchins High School, Webb was rejected by the varsity team and told to play junior varsity ball because of his size. So discouraged that he almost abandoned basketball altogether, he decided instead to devote all his energies to improving his game. When he eventually made it onto the varsity team, he averaged twenty-six points a game and as a senior was named Player of the Year. He also was one of ten Texas high school players to be named to the All-State team.