On Tuesday, Prep Rally brought you footage of the slam dunk contest from the 2012 Spalding Hoophall Classic, one of the nation's most prestigious in-season prep basketball tournaments. While there were a number of impressive dunks in that particular Slama Jama throwdown, the winner came from Santa Ana (Calif.) Mater Dei phenom Stanley Johnson on a stupendous assist from teammate Katin Reinhardt.
That much you already knew. What you probably didn't realize, unless you happened to be in attendance in Springfield, Mass., on Monday afternoon, was that Johnson accidentally hit an infant with a pass back to Reinhardt while the two were trying to hook up for their contest-winning slam.
As we have a tendency to do here at Prep Rally, we were told of that story and dug up a copy of the video footage that shows the teensy tot getting accidentally struck by a stray basketball. What it shows thereafter is a rather touching scene, with Johnson quickly going from celebrating his contest-winning slam to offering up an apology to the family whose child was accidentally struck by his pass.
In Prep Rally's modest opinion, that was a pretty mature and touching response. That a child in the stands was accidentally hit with a basketball was clearly a simple accident under any circumstances. No one would have held Stanley Johnson responsible for it, and he easily could have acted like the whole thing never happened.
Instead, he went out of his way to thank the family for understanding and allowing him to continue with his dunk attempt … and eventual slam dunk title.
As it turned out, Johnson's slam dunk title was hardly the only good news of the day for Mater Dei. The Southern California school scored another signature win for its national resume with an 88-50 whitewashing of New York (N.Y.) Christ the King School.
Reinhardt, a UNLV signee, scored a whopping 35 points on an incredible nine 3-pointers. Still, the most notable thing he did all day, at least in terms of video posterity, was almost certainly connected to a pair of assists that didn't even count as helpers, and his own efforts to smooth things over with a family that just happened to be next to him in the stands.
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