DD (Chocolate Thunder) dies of heart attack at 58

I more enjoy hearing the stories about how great a guy he was, especially to the fans. The world lost a great ambassador for the NBA.

Nice tribute by Charles Pierce at Grantland.

 

http://grantland.com/the-trian...l-dawkins-1957-2015/

... He was enormously talented, but he never quite got to the top in his 14-year career. Besides the dunk in 1979 that sealed his renown, the lasting image I have of Dawkins is the genuinely terrifying moment in the 1977 NBA Finals in which he squared off against my old college dormitory neighbor Maurice Lucas of the Portland Trail Blazers. Two huge men, feet squarely planted, looking to land haymakers on each other. The potential for a double–Rudy Tomjanovich seemed limitless.

If that’s the lasting image, the lasting memory I have is the story Bob Ryan tells of the deciding game of the 1982 Eastern Conference finals, when, as the game wound down with the Celtics plainly losing to the Philadelphia 76ers, the crowd in the Boston Garden began chanting “Beat L.A.!” (They would face the Lakers in the Finals.) Ryan asked Dawkins what he thought when he heard that.

“Man,” Dawkins replied. “When I heard that, my dick got stiff.”

That’s the way it worked on Lovetron. It was a great and surpassingly happy civilization, now past. Darryl Dawkins is dead, but the man brought the funk to a disbelieving world. He truly did.

RIP Daryl Dawkins.

I'll never forget seeing him play in person. Somehow had seats on the floor under the basket. Dawkins was just an enormous player. Insanely powerful. What a guy. RIP.