BDL Interview: ‘Jake H.,’ post-layoff office slam dunk champion
Two Fridays ago, a man I’d never met dunked his way into my heart.
The link I saw promised a video of a guy who, after getting laid off, decided to spend his remaining time in the office filming himself crushing dunks on a Fisher Price hoop. It delivered, in spades. This was neither clickbait nor con job, but rather a precisely-as-advertised two-minute, 22-second compilation of a grown man dunking over and over again on a child’s basket in Every Generic Office. It delighted me, and I said so.
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The video’s existence seemed absurd. The alleged motivation behind it, though, seemed not only reasonable, but like a perfect and surprisingly cheery response to the dual indignities of getting your pink slip and having to keep showing up to an empty office until the clock runs out.
Beyond that, the scarcely-half-a-tweet’s-worth of explanation attending the clip — “office layoffs. just me and that 6′ hoop for my final days” — made me want to know more about everything about it. So I reached out to “Jake H,” the man behind the movie.
Jake seems genuinely surprised by the attention his “Space Jam”-soundtracked highlight reel has received. (To which I can only reply: Forget it, Jake. It’s late July/early August on the sports Internet.) This tickles him, and he wants to talk about it.
“The video’s popularity is hilarious to me,” he writes in an email. “What a great way to go out.”
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Then again, given how he’s arrived at this newfound popularity, he’s also a bit leery about me probing for details. Like, for example, his last name, which I agreed not to share, since his former and prospective future bosses might not find this quite so funny. His age is “about nine years younger than Vince Carter.” (About 29, in other words.) His employer was “a tech company.” He lives “in the Bay Area.”
Ask about the hoop, though, and he opens up.
“We got the hoop a few years ago,” writes Jake, who says he’d been with the company for five years before being laid off. “When we moved office buildings a year ago, my colleague Phyllis wanted to get rid of it and ‘class up’ the office. But we put up a fight to keep it, because it added to the atmosphere.”
As Jake tells it, that atmospheric boost was essential by the time he’d reached the end of the company line.
“After a couple of rounds of layoffs due to restructuring, I was left on a little longer for the final few weeks as the office was closing down,” he writes. “I was helping get rid of furniture, transitioning things, etc. But I was pretty much by myself for most of the time. It was a bit depressing, going from an office of [about] 25 [people] to empty.”
Eventually, after accomplishing the tasks set forth by his soon-to-be-former employers, Jake settled on his unique way to battle the depression.
“I got my stuff done and kept in alignment with management,” he writes. “But you could say there was some extra bandwidth near the end.”
Yes. Yes, I believe you could say that.
Jake was kind enough to revisit the product of that extra bandwidth, and the circumstances surrounding its expression, in an email interview, lightly edited for clarity:
Walk me through the process. When did you first get the idea to make this video, and what led you to follow through on that impulse?
My friends were texting me asking how my work was going, so I sent a text back with a picture of our empty office — just a bunch of sad, empty desks and chairs. My friend texted back and asked why I wasn’t dunking on that toy hoop. So I made a slo-mo dunk video right then and texted it back. It got a great response from my friends. They were far more interested in these stupid dunks than anything about my job for the past five years. So I kept going with a dunk of the day.
My former co-workers were into it, as well. Per a suggestion, I put together a highlight reel to share at an office farewell happy hour. Had to decide what music to pair with it. My wife: “Um. ‘Space Jam’ soundtrack. Obvi.” (ED. NOTE: Jake’s video features a version by cover-song mainstays The Tune Robbers rather than the Quad City DJ’s original.)
To be honest, there were two shorter reels made by my wife and friend to mock me. They used cuts of me dunking and scenes of the young Michael Jordan in “Space Jam” with music by Seal. And I’m not sure why, but Taylor Swift was incorporated into one of them.
Multiple wardrobe changes suggest that this video was shot over a number of days, and you put some production work into this — different camera angles, slow-motion sequences, dissolves, “Space Jam,” etc. This was clearly a labor of love. How much time and effort went into producing this?
It was pretty easy. “Shot on iPhone 6” … still waiting for Apple to call about my ad campaign deal. I just had my phone set to record and propped it up against a LeBron James shoe we had sitting around. With the right angle, it downplays the fact that I was only getting a few inches of air and that I am taller than the hoop.
How much dunking wound up on the cutting room floor? Will there be a follow-up clip of outtakes/failed attempts?
I was working on a cartwheel dunk, but never landed it. I found that I can’t actually do a cartwheel, so it was probably too much for me. (ED. NOTE: To be fair, it was too much for Michael Finley, too.)
Also, there was a weird one where I started in a crouched position with my back parallel to the ground and the ball resting on my back before I flailed and popped the ball up into the air and followed with a 180, catch and slam. It was going to look super awkward — imagine a wacky inflatable tube guy at the car dealer. But I couldn’t finish it. Not sure if that one has ever been done before. Vince Carter should try it before he gets too old.
Since you posted this video, it’s been featured on BDL, Reddit, ESPN and a host of other websites. Have you heard from any of your former co-workers and colleagues since this went viral? If so, what have they said?
Mostly a bunch of text messages and a lot of laughing about the whole thing. It’s been a great way to go out. I had a lot of great co-workers, so I’m glad to share this odd experience with them.
Specifically, have you heard from the person whose face is depicted on the cardboard cutout you dunk over at the 16-second mark?
Yes. He’s a fan.
Which dunkers are your all-time favorites? Which ones inspired your work here the most?
Vince Carter. His 2000 Olympic dunk is my favorite.
How would you describe your dunking style?
I think I am still trying to find my style. Everyone is born with a dunking style, but they say it takes 10,000 dunks before you really can truly know what it is.
It can be difficult to critique your own work, but I’d like you to re-watch a few specific dunks, tell me what inspired you to try them, and tell me how you think the finished products came out.
Let’s start here — off-the-wall, off-the-forehead, off-the-wall:
Steve Nash. (ED. NOTE: Jake ought to give himself more credit. He’s playing both Nash and Amar’e here.)
This:
This is the weakest of all of them. Still, no regrets.
The Birthday Cake:
I just hope Gerald Green [who pulled this off in the 2008 Slam Dunk Contest] sees this one day.
Follow-up question: What did you use for your cake?
The birthday “cupcake” was an upside-down red Solo cup taped to the rim with a birthday candle wedged into the top.
What I have taken to calling “Rolling Thunder”:
The yoga ball snuck up on me.
The between-the-legs bounce pass off the backboard:
How do you think yours stacked up to Kenny “The Jet” Smith’s version from the 1990 Dunk Contest?
I actually don’t think I’ve ever seen Kenny’s. Otherwise, I would have tried adding the 180 reverse at the end to match his. But his is clearly better —he’s got great extension, a lot of power, and the 180 reverse really takes it to another level. Plus, he’s not using a Fisher Price hoop.
You close the video with Vinsanity-style arm-in-the-rim throwdowns that punish the hoop to the point of explosion:
Some viewers have suggested that these final slams lay bare your frustration at the layoffs, serving as a sort of thematic exclamation point highlighting the naked fury of one man raging against a corporate culture that often treats people as nameless, faceless, replaceable drones. Was that your artistic intent?
I knew the last dunk was going to be my last at my company. I wanted to finish big and see if I could break the hoop. It kind of surprised me how it really exploded apart — not unlike how our office ended. But that’s life, you know?
If I can reach out and get a hold of you, it stands to reason that other people can, too. Has this video resulted in any job offers? If not, what message would you most like to communicate to prospective employers?
Call me a fool, but I’m pursuing some “traditional” routes of finding work. It’s not as though I’ll be in a salary negotiation and showing a prospective employer my dunk video one more time to try to sweeten the deal.
Or maybe I should. I don’t know. I’m open to suggestions.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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