The 1988 NBA Slam Dunk Contest is one of the most replayed events in basketball history, and Jordan had the rare advantage of staging it at home — All-Star Weekend was in Chicago that year, and the contest took place on the Bulls' own floor at Chicago Stadium. In front of his own crowd, Jordan went head-to-head with Dominique Wilkins in a duel that is still argued over today, and won it on his final attempt with the dunk that became iconic: a takeoff from the free-throw line, body fully extended, that has been distilled into the Jumpman silhouette itself.

This photograph captures a different attempt from that same night — Jordan rising under the rim on a reverse, the ball cupped overhead, the red Bulls road uniform and the shoes sharp and unobstructed. The back confirms it in the photographer's own hand: "ORIGINAL — REVERSE 180°." It is a first-generation press print, not a later reproduction, and it documents a specific moment from a contest that exists mostly as grainy broadcast footage. A crisp, large-format still from that night is a genuinely scarce thing.

The shoes matter here too. In the 1988 contest Jordan wore the Air Jordan 3 — Tinker Hatfield's design, the elephant-print model with the first Jumpman logo, the shoe widely credited with keeping Jordan at Nike. Seeing it on his feet in a contemporaneous photograph from the contest ties the image directly to one of the most important moments in sneaker history.

And it carries the Carl V. Sissac name. Sissac was a longtime Chicago Bulls photographer, and his archive prints are the backbone of the DimeLabs Type 1 collection. A Sissac original from the 1988 Slam Dunk Contest — annotated by the photographer, authenticated by PSA as a Type I, and held one-of-one — documents what was actually in the building that night.