LOS ANGELES — Hours before he’d turn back the clock with a nod to Vince Carter that wound up winning him the Verizon Slam Dunk contest, Donovan Mitchell took another look into the past, thinking back on his earliest NBA memory, the first time the league he’d one day join actually became real to him.

“Man, that’s a tough one,” the Utah Jazz rookie told Yahoo Sports during Saturday’s media session. “The first one that comes to mind, I would say, is probably ‘The Decision’, with LeBron.”

Makes sense. Mitchell was 13 years old when LeBron James went on ESPN to tell Jim Gray that he’d chosen to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and join the Miami Heat in free agency. It was a huge deal — “That really changed the league, from that point on,” Mitchell said — that had nearly 10 million sets of eyeballs glued to television sets all over the United States.

Not Mitchell’s, though.

“I was there, when he had The Decision,” Mitchell explained. “So that would probably be the biggest one.”

Like, there there?

View photos Watching Vince Carter fly helped inspire a generation of kids to pick up a basketball and start trying to soar. (Getty) More

“It was in Greenwich, Conn., and I went to school in Greenwich [at Greenwich Country Day School],” he said. “So, as a big LeBron fan in the sixth grade, I forced my mom to let me go. I wanted him to go to Miami. I wanted him to get his first ring.”

Young Donovan was glad to see one of his favorite players chart a course for a more successful future. Not everybody at the Greenwich Boys & Girls Club shared his enthusiasm.

“The people there who were Knicks fans … they weren’t too happy about it,” Mitchell said. “I almost got hit in the head with a Snapple bottle because they were just throwing stuff around outside. It was cool. I was just celebrating, so it was pretty cool.”

The specifics likely differ quite a bit, but you might have a story at least spiritually similar to Mitchell’s: a moment trapped in amber in your memory when the NBA and the stars who populate it crossed over from theoretical to tangible. In talking to more than a dozen of the first- and second-year players who suited up for Friday’s Rising Stars Challenge — a collection of domestic and international talents who could come to comprise the next generation of NBA stars — it became clear that they all did … even if none of Mitchell’s peers’ stories included “ducking Snapple bottles outside a Boys & Girls Club.” (Thank heaven for small mercies.)

One popular touchstone for the 19-to-22-year-old cohort? The legendary dunker who inspired Mitchell’s final-round throwdown on Saturday night.

“I mean, I was always into the game — I didn’t have TV or cable or Internet, so I didn’t really watch anybody for a while,” said Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, who grew up in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. “But watching Vince in the Dunk Contest, and watching him play, he was my favorite player.”

“You know, I watched Vince Carter,” added Murray’s countryman and Memphis Grizzlies guard Dillon Brooks, from Mississauga, Ontario. “With the lobs, he just had Toronto … everybody was wearing a purple Toronto jersey. He just made me want to play basketball, and want to dunk, and want to be a part of all that.”

While that feeling certainly resonated with a generation of kids coming up in Canada, it also stretched far, far beyond the borders of the Great White North.

“Dunk Contest!” exclaimed Bogdan Bogdanovic. The Sacramento Kings guard — a comparative elder statesman at 25, who starred in the EuroLeague for several years before coming to the U.S. this season — beamed and laughed as he recalled what it was like to marvel at his new teammate’s handiwork in his native Belgrade.

“I remember we had Sony Ericsson phones. They were only able to play the videos on them,” Bogdanovic said. “One of our friends had the short clip of a couple of dunks of his, so we just watch them over and over. It was most popular at that time.”

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