This is episode 7 of the Dunk Talk Podcast. I’m Dylan Haugen, joined by my co-host Hunter Castona, and the guest is Shankar Iyer, who runs Above the Rim Reviews on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Shankar is probably the smartest person I know on basketball shoes. He owns 77 pairs at last count, around 45 of them basketball shoes, with maybe 35 strictly indoor performance hoops shoes. This episode is the cleanest answer I’ve gotten to the question every dunker eventually asks me: what shoes should I actually buy if my goal is to jump higher and land more dunks?
Shankar’s top three shoes for dunking
Cutting to the recommendation, here’s Shankar’s current top three:
- Li-Ning Gamma (Yuxin Gamma): best overall, painful price.
- Way of Wade 10: clear second, much more accessible.
- Kobe 8 chassis with a 361 AG midsole drop-in: custom build, his personal favorite mod.
Each one earns its slot for a different reason. The thread that runs through all three is embedded carbon fiber in the right place: a thin strip running from toe to heel that bends like a tiny springboard under load and returns to its form. That’s where the propulsion comes from. Shankar walked through the physics on the episode. Carbon fiber has a flexibility-to-rigidity ratio plus light weight that turns it into stored-energy on every step, and the foot-strike mechanics of dunking (a hard plant and a hard push) are exactly the loading pattern carbon fiber is built for.
Way of Wade 10: the daily driver
The Way of Wade 10 is the shoe I personally jump in. So does Hunter. Shankar ranks it just behind the Gamma because the carbon fiber implementation is excellent, the weight is low, and the traction (when it works) is genuinely 100 percent. The one knock he has on the W10 is that the traction can be inconsistent. When the rubber compound is fresh and the floor is clean, it’s as good as it gets. When the floor is dirty or the rubber gets rubbed off, it drops noticeably. (My personal fix: when my white W10 Lows pick up red court dust at my home gym, I clean them with a shoe cleaner and the traction comes right back. Not a permanent issue.)
For most dunkers reading this, the W10 is the right starting point. It’s also $200 retail (less on sale) instead of $400+, which matters.
Li-Ning Gamma: the best, if you can find them
The Li-Ning Yuxin Gamma is the shoe Shankar would put at number one if price weren’t a factor. Same embedded carbon fiber, same light upper, but the traction is noticeably more consistent than the W10. Shankar said straight up: “they’re off the charts on everything. The only problem is the price.”
The price is the wall. In the US, you’ll see them on Poizon, KicksCrew, or Kick Zone in the $250–$500 range depending on colorway. Some go for $600 in specific colors. The retail price in China is reportedly closer to ¥165 (about $25), which makes the US markup absurd. Shankar joked that the cheapest path is buying a plane ticket to China. That’s only true if you can do the round trip plus the shoes for under $500, which you can’t, but the underlying point stands. If you have a friend in mainland China, you can get the Gammas at retail. If you don’t, you’re paying the import markup.
The two current colorways are also some of the best-looking basketball shoes Shankar or I have seen recently. A clean blue and a purple with rainbow accents. They’re hard to dress around (Shankar’s words), but they’re iconic at the rim.
If you can’t get the Gamma, look at the Li-Ning Yushuai Big 3 as a substitute. Same embedded carbon fiber, similar build, slightly heavier, and the retail is closer to $150–$160. Shankar’s call: you get probably 90 percent of the Gamma for under half the price.
The Kobe 8 + 361 AG midsole custom build
The third recommendation isn’t a shoe you can buy off the shelf. It’s a build. Shankar takes the original Kobe 8 (the lightest, traction-best chassis Nike has made in years, with a thin carbon fiber strip in the midfoot for stability) and swaps the stock midsole for the 361 AG drop-in. The 361 AG is a midsole with serious cushion and bounce that was originally built for the Aaron Gordon line. The shoes themselves (the AG forks) are too heavy and too high for serious dunking, but the midsole on its own is special.
The result of the swap is the lightest fast-traction Kobe chassis with the bounciest cushion currently on the market sitting in the middle. Shankar’s only played in his custom build a few times and has done some of his crazier jumping in them both times. Big caveat for anyone considering the same build: a pair of Kobe 8s is itself an investment, plus the 361 midsole drop-in. The buy-in is real. If you’re going to do it, the math works out cleanest when you get the Kobe 8s at a Nike factory sale and the midsole from Serious Player Only (who sells the drop-ins as standalone products, and Shankar credits them as one of the better brands in this space right now).
The budget tier: Way of Wade All City 12
If you don’t want to spend $200 or $400, the answer Shankar and I both arrived at independently is the Way of Wade All City 12. Same parent brand as the W10. Same carbon fiber design philosophy. Roughly 90 percent of the W10 performance for $150 retail or less. I’ve been wearing them as my main daily driver alongside the W10 and have bought a second pair because of how much I’ve been jumping in them.
The All City 11s were also strong but they didn’t carry an 11.5 size for a while, which kept me out of them. The 12s do. If you’re a dunker on a budget who wants a shoe that’ll actually let you jump and not give up the carbon fiber benefit, the All City 12 is the pick.
On Victory Insoles (and why Shankar doesn’t recommend them)
The Victory Insole conversation comes up constantly in the dunk world. Shankar’s take is harsh but accurate. The physics works: carbon fiber compresses and pushes back under load. The problem is that putting carbon fiber in an insole rather than in the shoe itself adds weight, takes weeks to break in, reduces the cushion above it, reduces the contact-to-floor feel, and costs more than the shoes you’d be putting them in. The benefit you do feel is mostly placebo. I’ve had a Victory ambassador deal before. The first session I wore them in I hit my first Windmill in five months. Every session after that the “effect” was gone. They’re fine. They’re not worth what they cost. If you want the carbon fiber benefit, buy a shoe that has it built in.
GT Cuts: what Donovan jumps in, and whether you should
Donovan Hawkins jumps in the GT Cut line (the 1s, 2s, and now the 3s). That on its own makes the GT Cuts worth discussing. (The full Donovan Hawkins episode covers his training in detail.)
Shankar’s honest read: the GT Cut 1 was revolutionary at the time. Heavy but it had a proper implementation of Nike React plus a Zoom Air unit underneath. Every step had real energy return. The GT Cut 2 is widely considered bad. The GT Cut 3 is significantly lighter and built more like a Kobe with ZoomX foam, which makes it more interesting if you can find a colorway you like. The biggest knock on the line overall is that they take two weeks to two months to break in. For a $180 retail price with that kind of break-in window and average looks, Shankar can’t justify them. Donovan can because Donovan jumps 50 inches. The rest of us should look elsewhere unless we’re willing to put in the time.
The Way of Wade 11 leak: probably skip it
Way of Wade 11s are coming. From the leaks and pre-release images, they look bulky. Shankar’s comparison: “like a W10 that was overbuilt for a football player.” The lead designer of the W10 line left Way of Wade to design Kyrie shoes for Anta in the middle of the W11 development cycle, which is part of why the W11 took 19 months to release. Shankar’s tentative ranking for the W11 puts it toward the bottom of shoes with angled carbon fiber, which still makes it a top 10–15 basketball shoe, but if you want a Way of Wade for dunking, the W10 or All City 12 are smarter buys.
The cheap-shoe answer for anyone without a budget for any of the above
If you can’t spend $150+ on a basketball shoe, go to Dick’s Sporting Goods and try on everything. Nike Sabrina 1s are the spiritual successor to the Kobe line and are great. The Jaws are decent. The LeBron NXXT Gen worked really well for Shankar’s brother. The KD 15s are good. Anything Nike makes goes on 80% off within six months at a factory store. The point is: try shoes on across brands first. You’ll learn your foot shape and what you like, and that learning compounds across every future pair you buy. (Adidas is generally too wide for both Shankar and me. That’s the kind of detail you only learn from physical try-ons.)
A short version of Shankar’s own dunk journey
Shankar is 6’4”–6’5”, 28 years old, and a former high school triple jumper / high jumper (2009–2013). He didn’t play high school basketball, just club and pickup. He got his first dunk at 15 at 6’2”. Hip injury in his early twenties pulled him out of jumping for years. The Covid pandemic and one specific Ballislife video (“what happens when pro dunkers take over an LA Fitness”) pulled him back in. That video featured Connor Barth (who’s the previous episode of this show), Isaiah Rivera, Austin Burke, and a few others. Shankar watched Connor (similar height) jumping the way he was and figured if he trained, he could get to 60 percent of that.
His training arc: tried ATG, didn’t work for his knee pain. Did Connor Barth’s program, got him into a base. Moved to THP because he plateaued. THP took him from a 31–32” vertical to a 37–38” vertical (39” on a great day). His main goal now is to get his head to rim on 9’10” or 10′, which would mean around a 43” vertical. He’s currently in the “the last few inches are the hardest” phase, which I’ve been hearing from a lot of guys in his vertical range.
The unique read he had was on what happens when you don’t try. Shankar said he had years where he assumed his athletic peak was rim-grazing and two-handed tomahawks. He never tested whether he could actually do more. Then the Ballislife video flipped him and he found out the answer was “yes, by a lot.” A lot of people in the dunk world stay on the “my genetics are limiting” story rather than running an actual experiment on themselves. That’s the read I think more dunkers should sit with.
A quick aside on hand speed (Shankar’s question to Hunter and me)
Shankar asked us how to build consistency on Eastbays and behind-the-back dunks. Two things I told him that I want to put on the record here:
- Low-rim sessions are non-negotiable. I do two dunk sessions a week. Saturday at Minnesota Dunk Squad on 9’10.5” or 10′. Wednesday solo or with one or two guys on 9′ to 9’8”, repping out dunks at high volume. The low-rim day is where the hand speed actually gets built.
- Don’t decelerate through the transfer. Jordan Kilganon told me this directly on behind-the-back dunks. People going full speed through the trick will instinctively slow down on the transfer to focus on it. The deceleration is what makes the dunk fail. Punch the dunk after the transfer at the same speed you started at and the conversion rate goes up massively.
Where to find Shankar
Shankar is “goire” on Instagram and TikTok, “Above the Rim Reviews” on YouTube. Go follow him. The shoe analysis is detailed enough that you’ll save yourself money the first time he talks you out of a bad pair.
Next episode is the Donovan Hawkins interview. After that we’ve got my own training breakdown for Dunk Camp, and after that the recap of the actual Utah Dunk Camp 2024 experience. The DunkMan League is also coming this summer. Comment with any dunker you want me to interview next.