This is episode 33 of the Dunk Talk Podcast. I’m Dylan Haugen, joined by Hunter Castona, and the guest is Ben Hopkins (“Ben Bounces”), a 6’5” dunker from North Carolina. Ben’s timeline is one of the most compressed we’ve had on the show: his first Windmill came two years ago, and he’s now hitting the Tamale, one of the most technical one-foot dunks in existence. The cheat codes, by his own admission: an 8’5.5” standing reach, a 41-inch one-foot vertical, and the small matter of being personally coached through the dunk by Jordan Kilganon on the Jump Master program, with Travis Reynolds as his lifelong session partner.
T-ball with Travis Reynolds at age 3
Ben and Travis met on the same t-ball team at age three and have been friends since. Ben stuck with baseball for a decade (he was a left-handed pitcher), dabbled in soccer and basketball after, and got pulled toward dunking around fifth grade by Travis, who Ben calls “the OG dunk kid.” The two of them spent fifth and sixth grade going to town on an 8’ driveway hoop, with Ben struggling to finish at all.
His first real dunk came at 14, a little over six feet tall, in a random gym-class pickup game. Then, in a pattern that will sound familiar to longtime listeners, he spammed one-handers for years. Some beginner-gains squatting in a high school weight class, a few off-the-backboard dunks (including a simple backboard reverse he still wants to recreate), a year and a half of JV basketball, and that was the whole resume. No Windmill until two years ago.
The pandemic hiatus and the Kilganon session
Ben stopped dunking entirely through college and the pandemic. The restart came from a single text: Travis invited him to a session at the blue Cavalry gym, and Ben walked into the biggest session of his life with no context. Jordan Kilganon was there. All the NC dunkers were there. Ben got swept up in the energy, decided on the spot he was going to Windmill, and hit the second Windmill of his life, right-handed (his off hand), in front of Kilganon, without knowing who Kilganon was yet.
From there it built in stages: spurts through the spring, serious weight training (bodybuilding-style at first) starting in May when his semester ended, weekly sessions with Travis, and then in August 2023 he joined Jump Master, Kilganon’s training program, and went all in.
Six inches of vertical from learning what a plyo is
Ben’s response to structured jump training is one of the cleanest examples of the “untrained elastic athlete” phenomenon we talk about on this show. Before Jump Master he had only ever done strength work. The program introduced power cleans and plyometrics, his muscles discovered ground contact time exists, and he gained roughly six inches of vertical in his first two training cycles. His current tested numbers from Dunk Camp Utah: 41 inches off one foot (11’10.5” touch on an 8’5.5” reach), 37 off two, and a 33-inch standing vertical that means he can credibly chase an off-vert Elbow.
The structure is unusual too: Jump Master runs a four-day cycle rather than a weekly one, so Ben’s jump day rotates through the calendar while Travis jumps every Saturday. Half the time one of them is dunking while the other watches and plays Clash of Clans, which is honestly an accurate picture of a healthy dunk crew.
The Tamale (and why it came so fast)
The Tamale is the dunk in the title, and Ben’s account of why it came quickly is the most useful part of the episode. He never built a low-rim trick foundation as a kid; his low-rim years were one-handers on 8’. What he has instead is live coaching from two people who have already studied the dunk: Kilganon reviews his attempts on video calls through Jump Master (Ben filmed a Tamale progress video for him the day we recorded), and Travis breaks it down in person at sessions. Borrowed pattern recognition compresses the learning curve enormously. Hunter and I see the same thing coaching newer guys at our own sessions: an athletic dunker with a coach pointing at the one wrong detail improves in weeks instead of years.
The ambidexterity helps too. Ben writes right-handed (possibly because his parents trained the lefty out of him as a toddler) but does sports left-handed and jumps off his left foot, and he can finish with either hand. The right-handed one-hander he punched at the Dunk Camp show, head at rim, is still one of the loudest dunks Hunter and I saw all camp.
Two Dunk Camps, two finals runs
Ben did both 2024 Dunk Camps, and the contests are where his competitiveness shows. He’s open about it: he loves everyone, and in contest mode he wants to bury them. At Utah he made the finals on dead legs and nerves, hit the J Rich, and had to settle for a basic one-hander as his second finals dunk because his bounce was gone. At Wisconsin he had the stamina to swap the one-hander for a Zeani and took second place. The lesson he drew is the same one Donovan gave us last episode: contests are a separate skill, and every rep at one makes the next one better.
His favorite part of camp wasn’t the contests, though. It was hearing other dunkers’ stories, the torn hamstrings and year-long layoffs behind guys now jumping 45 inches, and realizing slumps are survivable. He was in one when we recorded, and it clearly didn’t worry him much: a week earlier he’d hit an Underboth on 9’9” (third make of his life) almost on a whim after a stranger at the court asked if he could Eastbay.
The North Carolina session logistics
For anyone curious how the NC crew actually operates: there’s no home gym. The rotation is the “Dallas court” (outdoor, three minutes from Ben’s house, guaranteed availability, rim with good give), the YMCA (slippery floors, inexplicably closes at 3 p.m. on Saturdays), the blue Cavalry gym and college gyms when a coach lets them in. Ben jumps on concrete more than almost anyone we know and is, in his own words, a hater of it: his shin splints flare faster outdoors and his sessions run shorter. He does it because an empty guaranteed court beats a perfect unavailable one.
Also for the record, since the comment section tracks this now: Hunter’s “for sure” count this episode was substantially reduced from the alleged twelve to fifteen of previous episodes. Ben and his dad have been keeping audit logs. Progress is progress.
What’s next for Ben
Ben’s near-term list: lock the Tamale on higher rims, get the off-vert Elbow attempt on film, keep climbing back toward 10’ Underboths, and keep building the one-foot bag that his reach and bounce make possible. Knowing how the next year actually went, the follow-up is worth queueing now: Ben came back on the show after winning a contest at real cost to his knee.
Ben posts as “Ben Bounces” on Instagram; go follow him and watch the Tamale progression in real time. Next episode is Hunter’s own story, from rim-grazing to Underboth. Comment with any dunker you want us to interview next.