How did Inoue learn to draw basketball?

Takehiko Inoue came to basketball as a player first. He has said he fell for the sport in his high school years and played on his school team, and Slam Dunk grew directly out of that experience: the drills, the gym hierarchy and the humiliation of the beginner are observed, not researched secondhand.

As the series progressed he studied the professional game intensely, working from real plays, real body mechanics and real court geometry. That study is why the art reads as accurate to players: the footwork of a crossover, the rotation on a jump shot, the way a box-out seals with the hips. Later work pushed the same method further, most visibly in Real, his wheelchair basketball series, built on close consultation with the players of that sport.

He drew on B4 Kent paper with spreads composed on B3 sheets, planning panels in facing pairs, a workflow he described publicly when the digital edition launched in 2025. The collector's translation of all this: original Slam Dunk pages are sports documents as much as comics art.