Dee Brown retired Thursday.

This isn’t world-altering, groundbreaking news. He was a decent shooting guard who had a respectable 11-year career in the NBA, and at 33 years of age, he was getting to the point where thoughts of retirement become more and more frequent.

So why is it noteworthy? I barely blinked when Luc Longley retired earlier this year, and he has a few championship rings earned with my hometown team. Dee Brown spent his career in Boston, Toronto and Orlando, places and teams that are about as close to my heart as my big toe.

Brown’s retirement makes my heart sink a little because in 1991 he was “The Man.”

I still remember watching the 1991 NBA Slam Dunk Contest that was in Charlotte, N.C. I was 12 years old and Michael Jordan and the Bulls were just beginning their dynasty. It was a good time to be a young basketball fan in Chicago.

So here I am sitting in front of the TV and this skinny 6′ 2″ kid from the Boston Celtics walks onto the court. I hadn’t really heard of him before that, although he was one of the top rookies that year.

He really wasn’t that impressive. He was on the thin side. He had some buggy eyes, and he hardly showed any emotion or sense of showmanship when he strolled onto the hardwood with the pill and paused for a moment.

Then he pumped up.

Dee was rocking the Reebok Pumps, one of the early 1990s gimmick shoes, along with the L.A. Gear Catapults, that were ill-disguised ripoffs of Nike’s Air series. The Pumps were legitimate for about a year-and-a-half, when everyone had to have a pair.

For some reason, we all thought the small, basketball-shaped button on the tongue of the shoe that inflated small pockets throughout the shoe to adjust the fit was the coolest thing ever. Twelve-year-olds are not known for their fashion sense.

So when Dee calmly bent at the waist, reached down to his kicks and squeezed the basketball button a few times on each shoe, the crowd went quiet for a moment. And then everyone went berserk.

They were going berserk right along with me and my friend Troy because we were shouting that that was the coolest thing we’d ever seen and that Dee Brown was now the coolest man walking the planet. Twelve-year-olds are also not known for having much perspective.

Dee proceeded to pump up before every dunk during the contest, and each time the All-Star audience let him know that, for at least that short period of time, he was the coolest man walking the planet. It also didn’t hurt that he could jump out of the gym and lay down some sick dunks.

The contest boiled down to Brown and Shawn Kemp, a second-year leaper who had actually appeared on some air traffic control screens. (Now tremendously overweight, Kemp sometimes shows up on seismographs.)

For his finale, Brown nonchalantly made his way to one end of the court and performed the pumping ritual, which by now had become the highlight of the contest. He accelerated toward the hoop and launched himself into basketball history.

As soon as he took off, Dee crooked his right arm, buried his face in his elbow and flushed the first “blind” dunk damn near anyone had ever seen. It was easily one