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• Slam Dunk, in the end of the arc when Mitsui finally rejoins the team. The build ups on his past, his descent to be a Delinquent, and culminating on him eventually trying to destroy the club and gets severely reprimanded by... Kogure, in which he spouts off a lot of truth. And then there's Anzai coming into the gym and all of Mitsui's flashbacks come off together. In the end, this troper remembers he almost held a tear when Mitsui eventually fell to his knees, crying and said to Anzai: "I... I want to play basketball..."
  • Another of the biggest tearjerkers in the whole series is Sakuragi being reminded of his biggest failure... saving his beloved father's life because he was beaten up by the bullies that were threatening him in his way to the hospital. "My father... he had a heart attack.. JUST LET ME GO!" For a show that has lots of sports action and comedy, it has a surprising dose of Character Development.
  • the first time he saw the entire Shouhoku vs. Kainan match. Despite his usual trend of making silly mistakes due to either overconfidence, excessive focus on self-centered agendas to upstage rivalling superstar players (especially Rukawa), or even both, Sakuragi eventually proves himself time and again to be worthy of his self-appointed title as a "basketball genius", culminating in him successfully pulling a perfect fake-out on every single person on both teams and the spectators then dunking through Kainan captain and Kanagawa Prefecture's No.1 ace player Shin'ichi "The Monster" Maki's defense, with resulting foul on the latter being the icing on the cake (7:00-8:35 of the clip). And just when the match has only less than 8 seconds left, he does exactly Akagi told him to ("If you can't get it in, then pass it to me and I'll do it.") when Maki and Jin corner him close to the basket... except that AKAGI WASN'T THERE TO CATCH IT, leaving Sakuragi to mistake Kainan center player Takasago (who has a passing resemblence to Akagi) for him in his peripherial view and pass to him instead. Even more frustrating was that, judging by the subsequent camera view of Kainan's side of the court, even if he did know Akagi really was, he couldn't have gotten the ball to him in time, as Maki was standing directly between the two (5:00-5:50 of the clip). Dammit, what was Akagi doing?!!!
• Along with a combo of Heartwarming Moment, there's also Uozumi's past. To whit, he actually started out completely untalented and was constantly scolded for low stamina, bad skills, etc. It was so bad that Uozumi nearly gave up basketball, but then the now-Coach Sergeant Nasty Taoka... rather than scolding him like usual, just sat down calmly and then gave a heartfelt talk on how he's actually thankful that Uozumi is in the team and encouraged him to move on. As a result, Uozumi is able to keep up and eventually become one of Ryonan's top players and is the feared 'Boss Monkey' we all know and love.
• Also a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, tell me you didn't cry when Sakuragi got up and said: "I love it, and this time I mean it."