If you had to pick one event to summarize what Michael Jordan meant to basketball, you could do a lot worse than the one that happened 27 years ago, when he cemented his title as “Air Jordan” by winning his second straight NBA Slam Dunk Contest on February 6, 1988. His final dunk, a soaring thing of beauty launched from just inside the free throw line, encapsulated the anti-gravity quality that Jordan brought to the game, in the process inspiring countless bedroom posters, selling warehouses full of athletic shoes, and elevating the NBA from a niche league to a marketing juggernaut.

One reason the ’88 dunk showdown still lives on in so many memories is that even with Jordan’s eye-popping final dunk – which earned him a perfect 50 and secured his second straight crown in the All-Star Weekend event – his win is still controversial. That’s because it was preceded by a powerful windmill throwdown by Atlanta’s Dominique Wilkins which only earned a 45. It was widely noted by the TV crew that the event was being held in Jordan’s hometown Chicago Stadium, and that the home crowd vibe seemed to influence the judges. Even Jordan has said he thought Wilkins was robbed, and would have given him a 49 or a 50 for his last dunk. As it was, MJ pulled out a 147-145 result (he and Wilkins combined to score four perfect 50’s on their six dunks) and the era of the slam dunk was in full swing.

Jordan would go on to be named MVP of the next day’s All-Star Game, leading the Eastern Conference to a win. Three years later, the Chicago Bulls assembled a team worthy of their superstar, and won their first championship in 1991. Five more would follow in the decade. And through it all, Michael Jordan would become the closest thing to royalty the United States could produce. He took over the Olympics, he slam dunked over aliens next to Bugs Bunny, he inexplicably retired to play baseball for two years…then came back to the Bulls and made it seem like he hadn’t been gone a day, leading them to three more titles.

Since his second retirement in 1998 (let’s just skip that whole business with the Wizards), every up-and-coming star has one question lobbed around them: Is this the next Michael Jordan? Kobe Bryant and LeBron James have built historically great careers, but everything they do is invariably matched against Jordan’s resume. With “Air Jordan” pumping up ratings (and sneakers) during the 1990s, the fact that Michael Jordan could also play defense, or beat you with the jump shot, got lost on many casual observers. A generation of kids grew up just wanting to dunk, something Jordan has blamed on the marketing image that surrounded him which ignored the fact that he also mastered the game’s fundamentals. But it’s hard to blame every kid on the playground (or R. Kelly) for wanting to fly during the ‘90s. Few people have made it look so easy, or so gorgeous, as Jordan did over and over…including a performance on this date that still has fans arguing over a quarter-century later.

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