Happiness Quote by John Starks

Starks is doing that athlete tightrope walk: reliving a swagger moment without sounding like he’s building a shrine to himself. “Obviously” is the tell. He’s flagging that everyone already knows what kind of highlight this was dunking on Horace Grant with Michael Jordan in the frame isn’t just a bucket, it’s a memory with an automatic replay package. The line acknowledges the mythology so he doesn’t have to oversell it.

What’s sharp is how he frames the violence of the act (“dunking on”) inside a language of humility and chance. “In those circumstances” is code for the stakes: the Knicks-Bulls war years, when Jordan wasn’t just a defender but an entire era’s gatekeeper. Starks isn’t narrating a normal play; he’s narrating a moment when a role-player briefly hijacks the storyline.

The subtext is defensive, too. Anyone who knows Starks’ arc knows the flip side: the way one bad night can swallow a career’s worth of good ones. By emphasizing “happy,” “fortunate,” and “position,” he shifts credit from ego to timing, team, and opportunity. It’s self-protection and professionalism in the same breath.

And then he lands it where basketball culture demands it land: not “for my legacy,” but “for my team.” That closing clause isn’t just PR; it’s a claim to belonging. Against the Bulls’ dynastic machine, the dunk becomes less about humiliating Jordan and more about proving the Knicks could still punch the narrative in the mouth.