This is episode 71 of the Dunk Talk Podcast. I’m Dylan Haugen, 5’11” professional dunker from Minnesota and one of the 24 athletes in Shaq’s DunkMan League this summer, and my guest is another one of them: Cam Hazzard, a 20-year-old from Dallas who tested a 50-inch vertical three weeks after coming back from a shattered hand, has never won a formal contest because he’s barely been in any, and might be the biggest sleeper in the entire league. This is his full story, told publicly for close to the first time, which is exactly the point of this podcast.
How we met (the Dallas session)
The backstory: Dennis and I were in Dallas teaching a volleyball conference how to use AI in their clubs, and the moment I knew I’d be in town, I knew I had to meet Cam. We rented out a massive facility, and while I had a mediocre day, Cam went berserk: 360 Underboth, 360 Scoop, 360 Inverter, essentially every 360 variation that exists, in one session (the full session is on my channel; his angles are on his). Since then, Dennis and I have been working with Cam on the digital marketing and personal-branding side, and the two of us are presenting on exactly that at Dunk Camp this year, so come find us there.
The kid who thought dunking was CGI
Cam’s origin is my favorite detail of the episode: he grew up watching Dunkademics with his cousin, who convinced him the dunks were CGI: that the things on screen weren’t physically possible. He believed it for years. The college-basketball dream consumed his adolescence instead, until life intervened twice: sophomore year of high school he tore both hamstrings weeks after his first Windmill (a sweat patch on the floor mid-warmup sent him into the splits, and rather than tearing muscle, he avulsed bone off the attachment, too small a chunk for surgery, so he waited a full year for his body to reabsorb it). When he returned he’d grown six inches, his coach moved him to the post, the college path was dead, and dunking quietly took its place: senior year he’d scare opposing teams with a 360 Windmill in warmups, then sit on the bench.
The first dunk came in November 2021 at 15 (we discovered live that I beat him to mine by a few months in the same year, at 13, a fact I will retire on), filmed on a phone propped against a basketball at his local rec center, in the grand tradition of pre-tripod camera setups (mine lived inside a shoe). And the Instagram only exists because of Donovan Hawkins: Cam sent clips to Donovan’s subscriber-reaction video, and Donovan personally replied that he jumped “way too high not to start an Instagram.” The account just passed 10,000 followers this year. Remember that number when you watch him this summer.
The progression nobody measured
Cam’s timeline, reconstructed on the call: Back Scratcher two months after the first dunk; first Windmill in May 2022; the hamstring year; the 2023 return where, in a couple of weeks, every dunk came back (post-injury athleticism is real; I’ve lived a small version of it). Watching the Dunk Camp 2023 show as a spectator lit the fuse: within two weeks he hit a 360 Windmill, Pump Reverse, and Reverse Windmill. Through 2024 he simply played and dunked four to five hours a day, every day, Dillan McCarthy-style, with inexplicably zero knee pain, and never once measured his vertical until 2025, when his first test ever read 47 inches. The elite dunks arrived in the summer of 2025, and by January he was hitting 360 Underboths consistently. Which is exactly when the hand happened.
The hand: shattered in January, a 50-inch vertical by spring
Second week of January, college intramurals (his words: the only reason he’s at college), playing deliberately light to protect his spring dunk events. He went up for a lob in full arm swing and smashed his hand into the bottom of a descending player’s heel: the metacarpal shattered horizontally, a knuckle broken completely off, his finger pointing the wrong direction before he registered any of it. Significant surgery, permanent plates and screws, tendons his surgeon openly worried wouldn’t heal right, and the arm strapped to his chest.
One week after surgery, Chuck Millan called and offered him a DunkMan League spot. Cam, immobilized, with no idea whether his hand would ever work properly, committed on the spot. Then: two and a half months of near-total inactivity (he couldn’t even do leg extensions without his hips lifting out of the seat), clearance to jump again, two to two-and-a-half weeks of training, and a retest: 50 inches. From shattered hand to the 50 club in roughly three months, and as of May the hand limits nothing. He calls it a blessing; I call it the most ominous warmup any league competitor has ever done.
Three shows in London, zero contests, total confidence
Cam’s competitive resume is hilariously thin for someone this dangerous: a study-abroad month at Oxford put him a 30-minute train from London, where an organization that found him online ran him through a community contest (he shocked a field including Cas and JumpLikeJay), a FIBA 3×3 halftime show (didn’t miss a dunk, which he learned is the European gold standard), and a Jordan Brand “Jumpman 23” event. That’s it. No formal contest win, because no formal contests. His self-scout going into the league is the right mix: not cocky, openly confident, and motivated by a specific thing that should worry everyone: whenever he hears a dunker say “I’d never try that dunk in a contest, too risky,” something sparks in him and that dunk goes on his contest list. He intends to bring the dunks other people are afraid to attempt. And, for the record, I’m in this league, and I’ve said publicly he can go far in it. That means something.
The advice section: be so good you can’t be ignored
For everyone watching DunkMan and wondering how to get there, Cam’s playbook, validated by his own arc:
- Keep posting; one video changes everything. His raw clips did 1-2k views for ages. Then a goofy jump-competition video with a friend, edited (his words) in a bathtub with zero effort, did 1.5 million views, and recognition compounded from there. You cannot predict the video; you can only make sure it exists.
- Build the connections deliberately. Comment on bigger creators’ posts, talk to everyone at Dunk Camp (or to people who went), know that Chuck and Billy sit at the center of the map. Cam cited me as the example: by the time DunkMan formed, everybody already knew me, and the invite was a no-brainer. That wasn’t luck; that was years of documented work and public relationships.
- Be so good you can’t be ignored. His closing thesis: he hit the same elite dunks for months to no views, kept obsessing, kept posting, and eventually the work became impossible to overlook, and the league called. The recognition lags the ability; keep building anyway.
We also talked honestly about the economics: strip out training programs, and the number of people earning a real full-time living purely from dunking is maybe two (Chen and Kilganon, roughly). Cam’s approach to the league reflects that maturity: all-in on DunkMan, walking through every door it opens, and not betting his entire life on a sport that can end on one rolled ankle. The league is the chance to change that math, for him and for everyone.
Find Cam as “Hazzardous Dunks” on every platform, at camhazzard.com, or honestly just ask ChatGPT about him; we’ve organized his Google presence properly, and there’s more Cam content on my channels, Dennis’s, and our company channel, Local Service Spotlight. More DunkMan athlete interviews are coming all summer, Chuck included. Thank you, Cam; see the rest of you in the next one.