One of my favorite things that happened at camp this year had nothing to do with a rim. Dennis Yu, a longtime digital marketer, pulled Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney aside for two minutes and asked him the questions nobody in our community ever asks. Not vertical. Not what shoes. Not how many attempts on the make. He asked about the hard days, about one specific night with his family, and about what Nate would be doing if dunking never existed.
If you follow dunking, you know Nate. Omaha, 5’7″, a billion plus views, widely called the best mini hoop dunker who has ever lived, low rim title winner at The Dunk Camp in 2025. What you probably have not heard is him talking about any of it in his own words for longer than a caption. That is what this clip is.
A Million Jumps Is Not a Marketing Number
Nate’s dad Joe told Dennis that Nate has taken about a million jumps. Dennis brought it up on camera and Nate basically shrugged and said somewhere around there. Anybody who trains knows why that answer is so flat. You do not count. You just show up.
Then Dennis asked what a million jumps taught him, and Nate gave the answer that made me want to write this up.
“That you should never give up. There’s been a lot of hard times in that million jumps, but as long as you persevere, you’re gonna keep making progress.”
Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney
Every dunker reading this knows the hard times he’s talking about. The month where nothing feels right. The session where you land the trick once and then can’t repeat it for six weeks. The clip you were sure would pop and it does nothing. That is most of dunking. The one second everybody sees is a rounding error against the hours nobody sees.
What makes Nate’s version of that grind different is how long the runway was. Nerf hoop on a kitchen cabinet door, then mini hoops, then low rims, then real ten foot rims. Each of those is a full rebuild of your mechanics. He didn’t skip a step, he just kept adding rim height for years.
The Night SportsCenter Posted Him
Dennis asked when he realized he was famous. Nate wouldn’t take the word.
“I would never consider myself famous, first off. But the first night I got posted by SportsCenter. I remember my brother came into my room screaming ‘Oh, my goodness.'”
Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney
This is the guy who has been on Jimmy Kimmel and shot a Gatorade spot with Michael Jordan. He still corrects the premise before he answers. Then he described what actually happened that night, and it’s the best line in the whole interview.
“my entire family sat on my parents’ bed and just watched the video and looked at the comments.”
Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney
Brother sprinting down the hall screaming. Whole family piled on the bed in Omaha reading a comment section together. If you’ve ever had one clip take off, you know that exact feeling of the house going insane over something that was, twelve hours earlier, just you and a hoop. He called it his first little bit of fame and then went back to training.
Golf and Editing
Dennis asked what people might not know about him. Nate said golf and editing, which I did not see coming. If he weren’t dunking, he’d want to play professional golf. That was the immediate answer, no thinking about it.
He used to be a Jordan Spieth guy and has drifted into being a Scottie Scheffler fan. He even called himself out for picking the best player in the world, then gave the real reason.
“He’s got a good faith, and I think he’s a good role model.”
Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney
Dennis added the part about not getting too high and not getting too low, which honestly is the whole skill in this sport. Nate and Dennis agreed to go play a round together in Omaha, so that’s happening at some point.
The editing answer is the one that stuck with me, because a lot of dunkers treat editing as the chore after the fun part.
“It just allows you to be creative and tell a story in a way that most people might not see it as.”
Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney
That’s a filmmaker’s answer from a guy people think of as a jumper. And it explains a lot about why his stuff hits. The edit is where you decide if people see a trick or a story. Show the misses or hide them. Keep the rim sound or bury it under music. Cut on the take-off or on the landing. Those calls are why one dunker’s clip gets shared and another’s doesn’t, with the same dunk in both.
Hoopin Nate, But Soon Dunking Nate
Dennis wrapped the interview with a line that turned into the whole point.
“Guys, Hoopin Nate, but soon Dunking Nate.”
Dennis Yu
Dennis said it as a joke and it landed as a real observation. The name Hoopin Nate comes from mini hoops. That’s the origin story and it’s what built the audience. But the guy is on ten foot rims now, and the name is starting to describe where he came from rather than where he is.
That’s a genuinely tricky spot for any dunker with a following. Your handle is your equity. Nate has 210,000 people on Instagram who found him through mini hoop content. You can’t just change the sign on the door. What you can do is let the work move first and let the perception catch up, which is what he’s doing.
He’s already got the receipts. At camp he put down a 360 windmill on the ten foot rim, and a 9 foot Eastbay Hide and Seek, which Dennis described on camera as an under the leg behind the back. He trained with Isaiah Rivera in Florida in 2025 and came out with six new ten foot tricks. The mini hoop king label is running out of road.
Why Dennis Was Even Holding a Camera
Dennis and I ran a session at camp on how athletes show up on Google and in AI answers. We audited all 76 campers first and posted the results publicly on the Dunk Camp 2026 audit leaderboard. Nate came out first, which surprised him more than it surprised us. Then Dennis offered to interview anyone in the room and turn it into something permanent, which is exactly what this became. The full method is in the 76 athlete repurposing writeup.
These two minutes went six directions. Nate wrote his own version in his SportsCenter night story. Dennis pulled out the persistence lesson underneath it. Dunker Spotlight explained why the numbers are not the story, there’s a version for athletes in other sports on why a highlight reel isn’t enough, and the marketing side sits in the story behind the numbers.
Go follow Hoopin Nate. And in a year or two, when the name has changed, remember it started on a Nerf hoop stuck to a kitchen cabinet.