Darryl Dawkins, who arrived in professional basketball as a gigantic teenager and became one of the game’s fiercest dunkers and most notoriously lovable characters, a backboard-smashing, referee-dissing, fun-loving manchild known to fans as Chocolate Thunder from Planet Lovetron, died on Thursday in Allentown, Pa. He was 58.
Tracey Sechler, a spokeswoman for Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, confirmed the death. Robert Tyler, a family friend, said the apparent cause was heart failure.
One of basketball’s larger-than-life figures — though at 6-foot-11 and more than 250 pounds he was pretty large to begin with — Dawkins made his mark on the sport’s history in a number of ways.