Travis Reynolds and I, Dylan Haugen, were most of the way through reviewing every dunk from Shaq’s DunkMan League group stages when we went off on a tangent about Dan Gross. It was supposed to be a thirty second intermission. It turned into the part of the conversation I have thought about most since.

The reason it came up is that Travis is building something for him, and the reason he is building it is that right now there is nowhere to actually watch Dan Gross dunk.

One of the best dunkers alive, and almost no way to see it

If you want to watch Dan, your options are to scroll his Instagram one post at a time hunting for dunks, or to dig through Travis’s raw session videos on YouTube and find the clips where he happens to be in frame. That is it. There is no mix, no highlight reel, no single place you can send somebody.

Travis put it plainly: if prime Dan were in the DunkMan League, he would put his money on him. The league is built exactly for what Dan does. And yet a real chunk of the people watching dunking right now do not know who he is, which is a strange thing to be true about someone Travis calls one of the greatest dunkers on the planet.

He is not saying that loosely. Dan is a two-foot, left-right jumper whose signature is the 360 Inverter, and he has a Dunkademics dunker profile like most of the pros do. He just does not have a body of work anybody can find.

The timeline

Dan had serious bounce in high school. He was already doing 360s and Double Elbows before he had trained for any of it. He was playing college basketball into 2020 and quit later that year to focus on dunking full time.

2021 was his real prime. That was the first year he could put everything into it, and it is the year he went off. 2022 started with a few good sessions and then essentially disappeared, because he had to take most of the year off with a back injury. He came back for a second prime in 2023 and hit some genuinely insane things, including a 360 Scoop Elbow.

After that it slid. 2024 was a slow decline even though he was still landing dunks most people never will. By 2025 he would try and it just was not the same, and at that point it stopped being a training problem.

What is actually wrong with his knees

Travis explained it better than I could, so here it is as close to how he said it as I can get.

One knee had a piece of bone that had broken off and was floating around inside the joint. When you extend your leg all the way and bring it back in, the kneecap shifts slightly into its groove, and the loose bone would get caught in there. It would lock up on him while he was just walking around. You obviously do not want that happening in the middle of a dunk. It had been building for a long time.

The other knee had a very small separation of bone. Not a break exactly, but bone, and bone hurts. So it was both knees, and the reason it never resolved is that bone injuries do not warm up the way soft tissue does. Once it starts hurting mid-session, it is not going to loosen up ten minutes later. It just ends the day. Zach Velis went through something similar and spent close to two years being told it was tendonitis before anyone found the loose bone.

He had double knee surgery earlier this year.

Where he is right now

As of August, Dan is technically cleared to start doing things again, and he is taking it unbelievably slowly, which is the correct call. There is no version of rushing this that ends well.

The photo at the top of this article is from a session in North Carolina this year with Dan, Ben Hopkins, Travis and a few of the other guys. Travis had a session with him in July where Dan bounced the ball off the ground, off the backboard, caught it and elbowed it. For about five minutes it looked like nothing had happened to him at all. Then he had to stop.

Travis’s read on that was the part that stuck with me: what looked incredible to everybody standing there was nothing compared to what Dan used to do. He used to hit that same dunk with a Double Elbow, comfortably. When I was with him about a month before that, he put down one small dunk without really using his knees at all. It was all hips.

Both of us think he comes back. The condition is narrow but simple. If he can jump and the injuries stop causing pain, he is fine. That is genuinely the whole question.

What Travis is building

Travis is working with Dan to collect literally every dunk he has footage of. Two things come out of that.

The first is a long raw video where you can just sit and watch every dunk he has done, however long that ends up being. Nobody knows yet, because the footage is still being gathered.

The second is an all-time mix, Hoop Mixtape style. That is the one that matters, because a raw archive is for people who already care and a mix is what makes somebody care in the first place.

There is no release date on either. Travis has been going back and forth on putting the raw video out after the mix so the mix gets the attention it deserves, which I think is right. He also floated putting the raw one up unlisted for anyone who really wants it before then.

Why any of this is worth doing

This is the exact problem the podcast exists for. There are dunkers who are elite at what they do and almost invisible everywhere it counts. Years of work sitting as loose clips on a phone, nothing written down, nothing anybody can search. When that person stops dunking for two years, the record just quietly stops existing.

Dan is the clearest case of it I can point to. One of the best to ever do this, out with a real injury, with no highlight reel to his name and a generation of dunkers coming up who have never seen him at his best. That is fixable, and Travis is fixing it.

When the mix drops we will cover it. Until then, if you have not seen Dan dunk, go find the clips, and pay attention to what he is doing off two feet.

I filmed a lot of conversations at The Dunk Camp this year. Record holders, black bands, guys who have been in this sport since before some of the campers were born. The most interesting thing anybody said all week took about fifteen seconds, came from Jordan Kilganon, and was aimed at an eighteen year old who had never heard it before.

“eventually, there’ll be no more dunkers to compete with. So it’s gonna be competing with yourself.”

Jordan Kilganon

“I was always scared of that moment.”

Jordan Kilganon

The most famous dunker alive just told the room that the scariest part of the career is not losing. It is winning until there is nobody left to line up against.

Who He Was Talking To

Polish dunker Piotr Zawiślak is eighteen, already black band, and was at this camp for the first time. He has said in every interview I have done with him that Kilganon is his inspiration for dunking and everything. That is not a media answer. You will see why in a minute.

So this is the version of the meet-your-hero video that usually goes nowhere. Kid meets legend, legend says nice things, everybody claps. That is not what happened. Kilganon gave him about ninety seconds of career philosophy that most dunkers never get, and he gave it in the order that actually matters: assessment, warning, then the thing he is afraid of.

The Assessment

“He’s 18 and he’s doing dunks that took me forever to make, so I’m excited to see what he’s got in the future.”

Jordan Kilganon

Read that again with the source in mind. Kilganon is the person whose dunks became the benchmark for what is possible in this sport. Him saying a teenager is already hitting dunks that took him years is not a compliment you hand out casually, and he doubled it later in the same conversation.

“There’s nobody that’s been this young that’s doing the stuff that he’s doing.”

Jordan Kilganon

Piotr’s answer on camera was two words: it’s gonna be scary. He meant his own future. Which is a fun line, and it is also the exact word Kilganon used sixty seconds later about something completely different.

The Warning Came Before the Philosophy

Before he got to the interesting part, Kilganon gave the boring part, and the boring part is the one that actually ends careers. He said the only thing Piotr has to focus on is staying consistent with his focus and appreciating what he has got. Then he acted out the failure mode: travelling all the time, doing crazy dunks, being one of the best dunkers in the world, and treating all of it as normal.

“No. You can’t have that kind of attitude.”

Jordan Kilganon

“You need to appreciate every moment and keep earning it.”

Jordan Kilganon

Everybody in this community has watched someone go through that arc. They get good, they get flown places, the shows start paying, and about two years in they stop training like the person who earned the invitation. The dunks do not get worse right away. The appetite does, and the dunks follow about eight months later.

Now the Part I Cannot Stop Thinking About

Kilganon told Piotr that right now he is aiming and competing mentally, in his head, with other dunkers. That is how this whole sport runs. You watch a clip, you decide you need to have that dunk, you go get it. Everybody in the top fifty is running on that fuel whether they admit it or not.

His point is that it is a fuel with a bottom. Get good enough for long enough and the list of people ahead of you empties out. There is no rival left to be annoyed by, no clip that makes you angry, no name you are quietly measuring yourself against. What is left is you and whatever you decided your standard is.

Then he admitted he was always scared of that moment, which is the most honest thing I have heard a dunker say on camera. Nobody talks about that. We talk about vert, about hand speed, about who is the best right now. Nobody talks about what motivates you after the leaderboard stops being interesting.

His Answer Was to Change What He Was Improving

He did not leave it as a problem. He explained what he did about it, and it is the origin story for the drills half of this community has copied.

“That’s why I invented the ball handling drills, is I can only jump so much, but I wanna keep getting better. How do I do that without jumping?”

Jordan Kilganon

That is a man hitting a physical ceiling and refusing to accept that the ceiling applies to everything. Vertical has a limit. Your jump caps out, and past a certain age the honest answer is that it caps out downward. Ball control does not work that way. There is no known top end on how fast and how clean you can move a ball around your body in the air.

So he stopped trying to win the jumping argument and invented a second argument he could keep winning. Half the trick bag that exists in freestyle dunking today traces back to that decision.

The Detail That Makes This Video Better Than It Looks

Here is the part I only caught after I sat down with all eight camp interviews. In a separate one, world record jumper Ethan Pimstone, who tested at 52.5 inches, asked Piotr where his hand speed comes from. Piotr said he found a drill on Jordan Kilganon’s channel and started doing it a lot. Ethan asked how often. Daily. Before an important contest he brings his ball to the gym and spends an hour on it.

So put the timeline together. Kilganon hits his jumping ceiling and invents the drills. A kid in Poland finds them on YouTube and does them every single day for years without ever speaking to him. The kid gets good enough to be flown to Utah. He meets the guy. He tries the drills in front of him.

“I was trying to do some of his drills, and I just couldn’t get it, and he was doing it with ease.”

Piotr Zawiślak

The student who trains the material daily still cannot match the author on his own exercise. I love that ending. It is also a reminder that the ceiling Kilganon hit on jumping is nowhere near where he is on hands. That whole conversation is up in Ethan Pimstone’s full camp interview.

Be Desperate

The closing instruction was five seconds long and I would put it on the wall of any gym.

“Be desperate to get better all the time with all your time possible.”

Jordan Kilganon

Desperate is a strange word to choose. It is not disciplined, not consistent, not any of the words that show up on training accounts. Desperate is what you are when you have not got the thing yet and you cannot stand it. Which is exactly the state he is telling Piotr to protect, because the danger of getting to the top is that you finally feel fine.

Piotr also said the part that made the whole interview land differently. He said Kilganon was hyping him up while he dunked, and that it was a pleasure to meet him not as a dunker but as a person. He wrote his own version in meeting the reason he started.

This got filmed because Dennis Yu and I ran a session at camp on how dunkers show up on Google and in AI tools, then offered to interview anyone who wanted one. The mechanics are in our repurposing system for athletes. Dunker Spotlight took the framework angle in his advice to young dunkers, Athlete Spotlight applied it to athletes in every other sport, and BlitzMetrics turned the drill origin into a lesson about hitting a ceiling.

Piotr is eighteen and the list of people ahead of him is still long. That is the good part of his career, and nobody ever tells you it is the good part until it is over.

Two years. That is the whole distance between a kid throwing dunks on outdoor rims in Poland and a dunker with a FIBA podium finish and another FIBA event booked for the following week. This is the longest interview we filmed at The Dunk Camp in Utah, and it is the one where Piotr Zawiślak, the Polish dunker, actually gives up the numbers.

Joe Kenney ran this one, not me. Joe is Hoopin Nate’s dad, and he asks the questions a parent asks rather than the questions a dunker asks, which is why it goes somewhere the usual camp interview does not. He opened with the timeline.

“Two years ago, I was just a kid who was doing all his dunks outdoor. I used to dream about doing FIBA, and everything.”

Piotr Zawiślak

The Record He Built in 24 Months

Here is what is already on the board. Piotr competed in a FIBA contest in Croatia and finished third. He is 18. He had a second FIBA event in France sitting one week after camp, meaning he flew from Salt Lake City into a European contest week with basically no reset. He also holds the Black Band, one of 13 in the world.

“I already did a FIBA contest in Croatia. I came third, but I’m proud of it.”

Piotr Zawiślak

Joe’s read on that is the emotional spine of the whole clip, and I think he is right. Most people carry a dream around for decades and never get within sight of it. Piotr said the words out loud two years ago and is now standing in the middle of them.

“People go a lifetime without achieving their dreams… Two years ago, you dreamt of FIBA… You’re living your dream already.”

Joe Kenney

44 to 45, Chasing 50

Joe asked the question every dunk fan actually wants answered. Piotr says he wants to be the best dunker alive, so how far is he from it? The answer came back as a number, not a speech. He is at 44 or 45 inches. He thinks the version of himself that wins needs to be around 50.

“I think I need to improve my bounce more just to get around maybe 50 inches.”

Piotr Zawiślak

Five or six inches sounds small until you have chased them. At 44 you are already past the point where general training moves the needle. Every inch after that is a fight with the weight room, your tendons, your body weight, and your calendar. He is not guessing at the number either. He knows exactly where he stands.

The Hole in the Bag

The most useful thing he said had nothing to do with vertical. Piotr is a dribble dunker. That is his whole identity on tape, and it is a real strength, because setting your own timing off the bounce is harder than it looks. But he named the gap himself: he needs dunks off the lob, and he needs to start working off the backboard.

Anyone who has been in a contest bracket knows why that matters. Rounds get short, the rim gets loud, and a judge who has already seen you put the ball on the floor three times starts scoring the fourth one lower. Lob dunks and board work are how you keep a bag from being predictable. He is 18 and he has already diagnosed his own tape.

The 720 Is the White Whale

Joe asked which dunk still gets away from him. No hesitation.

“So 720. Yeah, 100%… because I already did 540 a few times. But I want to do 720 so bad.”

Piotr Zawiślak

He has landed 540 several times, which means the rotation mechanics are not the wall. The wall is air time. That extra half turn has to happen inside the same hang, so the 720 loops right back to the 50 inch goal. His dunk list and his jump goal are the same project described two different ways.

Why Isaiah Rivera

Piotr’s answer on who he looks up to is the most technical part of the clip, and it is not hero worship. Isaiah Rivera jumps off the same approach he does. Isaiah is right handed. The dunks are built out of the same components. So Piotr is not studying a style he cannot borrow from, he is studying his own style five years down the road.

“He’s pushing his limit in the weight room… All of my dunks are really similar to him.”

Piotr Zawiślak

Joe added the part that anybody who has been around Isaiah will confirm.

“The best thing about Isaiah Rivera is that he treats people with dignity and respect.”

Joe Kenney

The second name he gave was Lipek, the Polish dunker, who is a doctor now. That one matters differently. Seeing somebody from his own country finish school without quitting the sport is why Piotr says he is planning on college and possibly physical therapy school. A role model who proves the exit ramp exists is worth as much as one who proves the ceiling is high.

Monday at Camp

If you want the receipts on where his bag is right now, he gave them.

“I hit almost all of my dunks. 360 Underboth, 540, 360 J reach, 360 behind the back, Eastbay.”

Piotr Zawiślak

That is a full session, in one night, in front of a room of dunkers he had only ever watched on a phone. The 360 Underboth is his signature and the reason a lot of us found him in the first place. Hitting it at camp, in America, on his first trip here, is the closest thing to a stamp this sport hands out.

Who Takes the Reins

Joe pointed out something the community avoids talking about. There was a 38 year old jumper in that building who was still incredible, and a lot of the names that built modern dunking are on the back nine. So he asked who takes over.

His answer named the low rim generation first, then listed me, himself, and Hoopin Nate. Joe added Dillan McCarthy, and then Cam Hazzard, who was not at camp that night.

He said Dylan Haugen, which is me, first, and I am not going to pretend that was not nice to hear. He named himself second, correctly. He named Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney for the low rim work and the Eastbay windmills on ten feet, then added Dillan McCarthy. Joe put Cam Hazzard in the conversation too. Both of them said they hope Isaiah and Jordan Kilganon stick around, because the next group still needs them in the gym.

Piotr wrote his own version of this at outdoor rims to the FIBA circuit. There is a longer look at what those two years actually took, an athlete side of it in living the dream on schedule, and the reason we film these at all in documenting the climb while it happens. All of it started with the session we taught at camp.

Watch the whole thing at the top. Five minutes, one dunker, and the clearest map anybody in this sport has given us of exactly what they have, exactly what they are missing, and exactly what they are chasing.

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.

Isaiah Rivera gave an 18-year-old three rules for making it in pro dunking, and only one of them was about jumping. I had the camera on for the whole thing at The Dunk Camp in Salt Lake City this summer, standing about four feet away, and I knew halfway through the second rule that we were going to have to publish this one.

Piotr Zawiślak is the kid asking the questions. He’s 18, he’s from Poland, he’s one of only 13 people in the world with a Dunk Camp Black Band, and Isaiah has been his favorite dunker since before anybody in the dunk world knew Piotr existed. So when Piotr got the chance to ask, he didn’t waste it on small talk.

“So Isaiah what’s your advice to, for example, me, like a person who wants to jump higher and to be one of the best dunkers like you?”

Piotr Zawiślak

Isaiah paused, said “if I were in your shoes,” and then laid out three things. Here they are in his order.

Rule One: Never Stop

“There’s gonna be bad days, there’s gonna be good days. Especially on the bad days, keep going.”

Isaiah Rivera

Every dunker reading this already knows what a bad session feels like. You warm up fine, the first few go down, and then something in your run-up disappears and you spend an hour missing dunks you’ve hit a hundred times. Isaiah’s point is that those days are the actual job.

He went further into injuries, which is the part I think people underrate. He said getting hurt is part of the game, and that the move isn’t to stop, it’s to find a way around it. Then he dropped the line that stuck with everybody who’s watched the clip: “The obstacle is the way.” That’s a pretty heavy thing to say casually at a dunk session, but he’s earned it. He’s been doing this professionally since he was 18 himself.

Rule Two: Master Marketing Yourself

This is the one that made me stop breathing behind the camera.

“Second thing, it’s not just about your physical abilities.”

Isaiah Rivera

“The pro dunking game, you gotta get good at social media. You gotta get good at marketing yourself. That’s a skill in and of itself, so master that.”

Isaiah Rivera

Two days earlier, in a classroom at that same camp, Dennis Yu and I stood in front of 76 campers and told them a version of the same thing. We’d audited all 76 of them beforehand and put the results on a public leaderboard at the Dunk Camp 2026 audit leaderboard. The whole session is written up at the repurposing system we taught 76 athletes.

Nobody has to take my word for it, because Isaiah has no idea that session happened. He wasn’t in the room. He just answered a question honestly, and then he named names.

“all of us, myself, Jake Clark, Jordan Kilganon, 1FootGod, we all mastered the social media game as well.”

Isaiah Rivera

Look at that list. Those are four of the most recognizable names in dunking, and the thing Isaiah picked out as common to all of them wasn’t vertical, wasn’t contest wins, wasn’t a signature dunk. It was that they all figured out the distribution side. Then he said “it goes hand in hand,” which is the cleanest summary of the whole thing I’ve heard from a dunker.

If you’re a young dunker with a good vertical and 400 followers, that’s the sentence to write on your wall. The jumping is the entry fee. Getting people to know you exist is the actual game, and the guys at the top treated it like a skill they had to train.

Rule Three: Enjoy It

“Enjoy the moments, man, ’cause we’re not gonna be able to dunk forever.”

Isaiah Rivera

Coming from a guy who’s been at the top of the sport for years, that lands differently than it would from anyone else. Dunking has a shelf life. Knees have opinions. Isaiah’s telling an 18-year-old with a 44 or 45 inch vertical to actually be present for it, because the window closes whether or not you noticed it was open.

“He’s the Future, Man”

After the advice I asked Isaiah what he thought of Piotr and what he’d seen at camp. He didn’t hedge.

“He’s the future, man. He is the future.”

Isaiah Rivera

Then he backed it up with a specific, which is what separates a real compliment from a polite one.

“I missed 360 Underboth a bunch of times. You hit it second try at a session.”

Isaiah Rivera

That’s the detail that makes the clip. Isaiah Rivera, one of the highest jumpers on the planet, was missing a 360 Underboth at that session. Piotr hit it on his second try. And Isaiah said it out loud, on camera, about himself, unprompted.

“I can’t fathom even doing the stuff you’re doing at 18 years old.”

Isaiah Rivera

He talked about barely hitting his first 360 Eastbay, said his vertical back then was nowhere near 44 or 45, joked that the whole thing made him feel old, and then gave the read I think is actually the most important line in the video.

“it also shows me how much the dunk game’s evolving.”

Isaiah Rivera

That’s a guy at the top of the sport publicly saying the next generation has moved the bar. The last thing he told Piotr was “I’m excited to see what you’re doing when you’re our age.” Piotr’s answer to how it felt was short and honest: “It was my dream, and I’m happy to be able to achieve this dream, and to make it happened.”

Where to Go From Here

Piotr wrote his own side of this in first person at Isaiah Rivera called me the future, and it’s worth reading because he explains what Isaiah meant to him before any of this happened. We broke down why a public co-sign like this is worth more than a highlight clip at when your idol co-signs you on camera.

The same idea applies well outside dunking, and that version is at the endorsement you cannot buy. If you want the technical side, meaning what a co-sign like this actually does to how Google and AI tools understand a person, that’s at why an expert co-sign is an entity signal.

Three rules, about two minutes of tape, one of the best dunkers alive telling an 18-year-old exactly what the job is. Watch it at the top of the page.

This one was just me. No guest, no co-host, just me, Dylan Haugen, catching everybody up on where my dunking has been over the past year, because it has been all over the place. Three months ago I was dunking on 8-foot rims off my wrong foot because my knee would not let me do anything else. Now I am getting ready for the biggest dunk contest ever put together. Here is the whole ride, the good stretches and the bad ones, in order.

I have been honest about being inconsistent with the podcast lately, so if you are a dunker who wants to come on, message me, because I am trying to get at least one person a week from here on out. A lot of the recent content has come from being around other guys, like the sessions I did with Cam Hazzard, and the interviews I filmed at The Dunk Camp.

Last Summer: Chasing My Weaknesses

A year ago I was in a good place. I was consistent with my dunks, hitting Between the Legs, Behind the Back, and 360 Windmill, but I honestly was not improving much. So I put my focus on my two biggest weaknesses, my off-dribble and my left hand, and it paid off with my first off-dribble Behind the Back and Eastbay on a 9’10.75” rim. Around then I flew to North Carolina for about ten days and trained with Travis Reynolds, Ben Hopkins, and Bishop Ukata. Being around like-minded people every single day is the fastest way I know to level up.

A Stretch of Travel, Shows, and Contests

When I got back I hit a run of events. I did a dunk show at the Daniel Freetag camp and closed it with a Dubble Up Elbow, then flew to LA and dunked with Dunkademics and Dom, and went at Vier Sunday in a dunk-horse setup at Venice Beach with some NBA guys watching. I also found a gym near me, H4 Sports Academy in Edina, that has hosted some of my best sessions since, including a big one with a ton of the Minnesota Dunk Squad guys.

The contest highlight of that stretch was an Inverted Scorpion over somebody, which as far as I know had never been done in a contest before. That is a dunk I first messed with on low rims years ago. Jordan Kilganon may well have done it on a low rim before me, but I brought it to 10 feet and then to a contest, which meant a lot. I kept the momentum into the fall and went back-to-back at the Nickel Dickle contest in Waconia, and across all of 2025 I did not lose a single dunk contest besides the one at Dunk Camp.

The Knee Injury That Cost Me Months

Then it turned. First an annoying ankle thing, then, on one of my last jumps at a huge fifteen-person session, I felt something deep at the bottom of my left patella tendon that I had never felt before. Every tendon injury feels like the end of the world the first time, and this one dragged. I got back to feeling good right before a big contest in Maryland, got flown out, and did really well, hitting Between the Legs, a Dubble Up X over three people, and a Dubble Up Elbow to close.

The problem is what happened after. I tweaked that same spot in my knee again, and this time it was months. For a long stretch I could not even jump off my normal plant. I was going to the gym on Saturdays and dunking on 8 feet off my wrong foot just to feel athletic, then benching and doing muscle-ups because that was all I could do. Every time I thought I was back, I did something dumb like a staff basketball game or a few no-warmup dunks at a Globetrotters event and set myself right back.

The Comeback: PRs and New Dunks

I finally broke the cycle on a random day when I tested my vertical almost as an afterthought and PRed at a 42-inch running vert on a jump that did not even feel maxed out. That gave me the confidence to push, and from there it snowballed. I started stacking sessions: my first 360 Between the Legs off-dribble, my first Underboth since early 2025, my first 360 Eastbay off-dribble, and eventually my first 360 Windmill. One session I hit six new dunks in a single day, including a two-hand Dwight tap and a handoff 180 Eastbay first try.

The theme I have talked about for years finally clicked. I had done everything I could at my old vertical and just needed a few more inches to unlock the next tier, and this was the stretch where those inches showed up. Suddenly 360 Underboth, 360 Inverter, and 360 Behind the Back all felt within reach instead of like far-off goals.

Fixing My Weak Quads in the Weight Room

Someone in a reaction video guessed I probably do not strength train properly, which is fair since I never talk about it. I train under JumpX with Tom Barnes and Austin Young, and have since I was fifteen. Coming out of the knee injury I realized my quads were badly weak, so I hammered leg extensions up to 140 pounds each leg and worked deep belt squats from about 158 pounds all the way up past 290. That base is a big reason I could handle two real jump sessions a week again, which is a lot of volume for me.

DunkMan Media Day and Dunk Camp

The best session of the whole run lined up perfectly, healthy and deloaded at a super nice gym in Wisconsin, where I hit a 360 Eastbay off-dribble first try and one of my best Windmills ever. Not long after, I got flown to Atlanta for DunkMan League Media Day with Mac McClung, Shelly McEwen, Doug Anderson, Cam, and fifteen-plus other guys, and on my day to dunk I hit Double V Space, a Hide and Seek, and an Underboth first try off a lob.

Then came Dunk Camp, where I dunked mostly with Piotr Zawislak and Nate, all three of us the same age and all going crazy. I hit my first Windmill Elbow off a handoff and hung, plus a 360 Scoop off a lob. I also got to do a presentation with Dennis Yu on personal branding, AI, and social media for dunkers, which ties right into why I document all of this in the first place.

Prepping for the Biggest Dunk Contest Ever

That brings me to now. I am officially in the DunkMan League, Shaq’s new league, competing against the best dunkers in the world for 500,000 dollars. Just being there is wild to me. These next few sessions are about feeling out which dunks I have consistent enough to actually throw in the biggest contest ever assembled. If you follow the sport, this is the moment it has been building toward, and I could not be more excited to be part of it.

If you want the earlier chapters of this story, I broke down how I changed my training after turning 18, and there are more guests and DunkMan athletes coming to the show soon. If you are a dunker who wants on, reach out.

Most young dunkers grow up being told to put the ball down and just play the game. Jeremiah Walker got the opposite advice, and it changed his life. On episode 73, my co-host Travis Reynolds and I, Dylan Haugen, sat down with the 20-year-old professional dunker out of London to trace his whole story, from a poorly planned set of school rims to getting flown around the world to jump.

This one hit home for Travis and me for a specific reason. A few episodes back the two of us made the case for why all dunkers should make long-form content, and Jeremiah told us he started posting his own long-form sessions after watching Dunk Talk. Getting him on the show felt like the loop closing in real time.

From a London Soccer Kid to a Dunker

Jeremiah grew up in a soccer family. He played from about five until he was eight, then admitted the truth to himself: he was terrible at it. A friend in primary school told him he was tall and should try basketball, so he did. He fell in love with the game at eight, but looking back he thinks he actually loved dunking more than basketball almost from the start. He just did not know it yet.

A lot of that came down to the rims. His school had a netball goal barely five feet high, so lunchtimes turned into everyone trying behind-the-backs and whatever else they could think of. When he moved up to secondary school, the gym had rims at 9 feet, 9’5”, 9’10”, and 10’, which he calls poorly planned but honestly perfect for a kid who wanted to dunk. He was catching little backscratchers on the 9-footers by 11, and his first real dunk came at 12, a putback on 10 feet over a friend. Then, in a story a lot of us know too well, he did not dunk again for two or three years.

The Coach Who Told Him to Dunk for a Living

For years Jeremiah still wanted to go pro in basketball, even though every team he joined only used him for dunking. The turning point came at 16, when an assistant coach looked him in the face and told him he was not good at basketball and should just dunk professionally. Jeremiah did not even know that was a real job. The coach told him to look up Joel Henry, and once he saw that a person could dunk full time, he told his coach he was done playing games and only wanted to train to dunk.

That stopped Travis and me in our tracks, because it is the exact opposite of what we heard growing up. Our coaches told us dunking was a waste of time and there was nothing there for us. Jeremiah got a coach who saw it early.

How the London Scene Built His Name

Jeremiah says the UK genuinely loves dunking, and London runs on street basketball. One-on-one and three-on-three events dominate, and most of them have a dunk contest attached, which is exactly where he built his name and got noticed for the Dunk Elite and FIBA circuits. His first proper contest was in 2021 at Ball Out, one of the biggest three-on-three events in the country, and he says he did awful. The next year he entered a contest with a clothing brand for a 500-pound prize, breezed through it, cleared three people on a Windmill, and won. The moment he had that 500 in his pocket, he decided he was a professional and would only do paid events from then on.

Jumping Over People Instead of Off Them

I asked Jeremiah about the Dubble Up trend, guys throwing themselves off a person to score, and he was honest about how the scoring rewards it. But he made a choice to jump clean over people instead. He figured actually clearing a person is harder than pushing off one, so it always rates a little better. His record is a clean five, starting from someone around 6’2”. He joked that he wishes he could just do Dubble Ups for the energy savings, but he committed to the harder version and stuck with it.

The Reverse Behind-the-Back and the Rest of the Bag

Right now his favorite dunk is what he calls a 360, though it is really a reverse 180 behind the back, and almost nobody else is hitting it in contests. He first landed it in a session in March, repped it relentlessly to have it ready for the FIBA season, and debuted it in Vienna a couple weeks before we talked. He says he has hit it at every contest since. The rest of the bag is deep: a Cuff 360 Windmill, a fake Eastbay over people, a cartwheel dunk he first pulled at Ghetto Games, and clean Windmills over up to five people that he has never once missed in a contest. He is currently chasing a 360 Underboth and a nasty left-hand Hide and Seek.

His inspiration list reads like a who is who of the last decade of dunking. He credits Isaiah Rivera for teaching him the penultimate through YouTube, and he grew up watching Connor Barth and Jordan Southerland, plus legends like Joel Henry, Guy Dupuy, and DaBoyJustFly.

Getting Flown Around the World to Dunk

The title of the episode comes from how far this has already taken him at 20. His first paid event was in the middle of the desert in Saudi Arabia, in the experimental city of NEOM, which he said was a wild contrast to London. His favorite event, though, is Ghetto Games in Latvia. He pulled up in a Porsche 911 with his flag out the window, jumped in front of a crowd he put in the thousands at an outdoor court, and said the Latvian fans know the culture so well they can tell a Tamale from a Mungu Eastbay. Between contests the organizers took the dunkers go-karting, zip lining, and bungee jumping. The way he put it, you cannot get a better job than flying somewhere, dunking for thirty minutes, and getting to explore.

A Long List of Goals at 20

Jeremiah is only 20, and his goal list is long: a 50-inch vertical, wins at Ball Out Dunk Elite, Kings of Air, and Quai 54, and a FIBA gold medal if that format ever comes back. He also wants to win the DunkMan League, Shaq’s new league, and above all he wants to be remembered as consistent, the guy who showed up and did not miss. Off the court he leans all the way into his personality, joking that if he ever stopped dunking he would be a full-time influencer who loves nature and hiking.

Why He Started Posting Long-Form

The part that meant the most to Travis and me: Jeremiah said he only started posting long-form content on YouTube after watching Dunk Talk. His logic was simple. He watches dunkers on YouTube all day, high level and low, so if he is already filming every session, why not set the tripod to landscape and post the whole thing. He also pointed to Cam Hazzard as proof that the guys who post consistently really are as good in person as they look online. His advice to anyone outside the community looking in is to grab three friends, go to a court, and start posting, because someone will watch, someone will follow, and the dunk world is small and supportive enough that the connections happen fast.

Jeremiah is 20 years old with a full passport and a signature dunk nobody else is hitting. You can read his full guest profile, follow him at @jumplikejay10 on Instagram and YouTube, and watch the whole conversation in the video above.

This is episode 67 of the Dunk Talk Podcast, and our most popular guest is back with the biggest number this show has ever hosted. I’m Dylan Haugen, with Hunter Castona, and Dillan McCarthy, the self-described and now community-ratified “alien,” has officially tested a 50-inch vertical at 19 years old: roughly the sixth human ever verified, and the youngest by years. When we interviewed him nine months ago he was at 49, jumping seven days a week with self-invented training we explicitly told you not to copy. The story of what changed between 49 and 50 is, satisfyingly, partly the story of him finally training intelligently, and partly the story of him remaining gloriously incomprehensible.

The recap, for the unfamiliar

The short version from episode 30: volleyball kid from New York (never one game of organized basketball), 4’10” in seventh grade, got into dunking at 12 watching Kilganon, broke his kneecap clean in half in eighth grade after a week of 500-pound leg presses at 90 pounds bodyweight, rebuilt from a 2-inch vertical via seated calf raises at his school desk, first dunk at 16 at 5’6”, and then the regime that made him famous: 300-plus max-effort jumps a day, every day (one recorded day hit 427; one week hit roughly 1,300), alongside 27 exercises a day at four sets of 12-20 reps, including 225x20x4 ass-to-grass elevated-heel squats. He once did so many barbell reps that blood came out of his arms, a sentence I am quoting and not elaborating on. Injuries through all of it: essentially none.

The funniest THP signing in history

What changed everything was the best cold-DM ever sent: THP guarantees six inches of vertical in six months or free training, so Dillan, sitting on a 49, messaged Austin Burke to inform him that he’d be collecting a 55-inch vertical for free. Austin found this funny enough to hand over John Evans’ phone number. John’s reaction to Dillan’s training history was, per Dillan, speechlessness: in a career of coaching every kind of athlete, he had never seen volume like it. To John’s great credit, the onboarding wasn’t “throw it all out”: two weeks of observation, a month of testing exercise responses, then a gradual transition, respecting that this body had adapted to loads that would hospitalize the rest of us.

The new shape of his training: lower reps, heavier weight, real explosive work, actual deloads, sprint training, one knee iso from John, and jumping cut from seven days a week to one or two (still five-hour sessions of 200-400 jumps with 40-second rests, because the alien remains the alien). The results: an ATG squat now at 405 for 2, dramatically better jump and lift technique, a longer penultimate, learned breathing mechanics, and a body that feels “wired” instead of fatigued. Cleans lag at 185, sabotaged by an anatomical quirk: unusually long forearms that torque his wrists in the catch, a disadvantage that extends, cruelly, to his favorite dunk, the Elbow (Travis Reynolds’ stubby forearms making elbows easy is the exact inverse). Knee pain since we last spoke: twice, gone by the next morning, both times.

The other unlock: Facebook Marketplace and a weighted ball

The skill-side change is my favorite detail. Last episode, Dillan had no low rim and essentially no hand-speed practice. The fix: free hoops off Facebook Marketplace. His backyard currently holds six hoops (peak inventory: ten); he lowers and destroys them with weighted-ball low-rim work, and when one dies, he gets another free one. Daily weighted-ball control work, including in his bedroom against the wall, transformed his hand speed and ball control, exactly the gap we flagged nine months ago. The man took our one criticism and solved it for zero dollars.

The 50, jump by jump

The test-day protocol is a study in accidental professionalism. His prior session had been a flat-tire day (could barely Windmill), so he took two full weeks off jumping, at the start of a deload, the closest thing to a taper he’s ever run. Diet locked for days: nothing processed, carbs the day before, grapes in the morning, a banana three hours out, water and a Body Armor. Cold gym, never broke a sweat. Roughly 20 jumps in, the 50 went up clean. He then spent the next 30 jumps hunting 50.5 and 51, came agonizingly close to the 51, and shut it down at about 50 total jumps, which for Dillan constitutes restraint. He’s also now training the right-left plant alongside his natural one, because apparently one world-class plant wasn’t enough inventory.

The meta-question Hunter and I keep circling: is his durability the result of the insane workload (a tendon base built by years of daily volume) or pure genetic lottery? Dillan’s own answer is honest: no clue. He tried his old program on a friend; the friend did not become an alien. As we said in the genetics episode: study the outliers, don’t copy them. He is the outlier other outliers point at.

What 50 at 19 means

Some context for the number: the verified 50 club is a handful of humans, mostly mid-to-late twenties at the time of testing (Isaiah at 24-25, Dak, Espinosa at 20). Dillan is 19, roughly one year into intelligent training, with his first contest behind him (he now accepts the title “professional dunker,” reluctantly), an Eastbay Elbow off the lob in progress, and a bag that grows weekly now that the hand-speed work exists. The 51 he nearly touched on test day is not a ceiling; it’s a scheduling question. The world record conversation now includes a teenager from New York who trains in a backyard full of free hoops, and honestly, the sport is better for it.

Dillan posts as himself on Instagram (still under-posting relative to 3,000-clip archives; still our ongoing campaign to fix that). Watch the 50 test footage and pay attention to how casual it looks; that’s the scary part. Next episode: pro dunkers react to the 2026 NBA dunk contest and the new Mac McClung dunks. See you there.

This is episode 65 of the Dunk Talk Podcast, and it’s the most reflective conversation we’ve had on here. I’m Dylan Haugen, with Hunter Castona finally hosting one of his own: Nolan Larson, 5’9” from Wisconsin, founding member of Hunter’s dunk squad, owner of one of the best peak sessions ever posted by a Midwest amateur, and a guy whose back injury in March took dunking away from him entirely. The episode title is the honest table of contents: injury, identity, and what the love of this thing looks like when you can’t do it anymore.

The kid who jumped over lunch trays

Nolan’s origin checks every box this podcast has cataloged: mini-hoop obsession in a friend’s furniture-cleared sunroom under a 2011 LeBron poster, escalating lunch-tray hurdle competitions at age nine, every ball sport available, no Xbox until 13, and a grandpa whose ever-longer bike rides built the legs early. His theory matches our running thesis: jumping genetics aside, the window from roughly 4 to 12 is where bounce gets built, and his was built outdoors. Through high school he ran football, basketball, and baseball year-round, but the tell was already there: he looked forward to pre-practice and post-practice dunk attempts more than basketball practice itself, and after a benched junior season and COVID, dunking simply took over.

Back-to-back first dunks at the YMCA

His first dunk story might be the best we’ve aired. Summer before junior year, around 5’7”-5’8”, post-game adrenaline at the YMCA two minutes from his house (the gym where he’d progressed from dunking a golf ball to a tennis ball to a volleyball), friends long since tired of throwing him lobs for nothing. A few attempts, then the perfect one, and the electric jolt every dunker remembers. Then his 6’1” long-armed friend Shawn stepped up and hit his first dunk on the very next attempt. Back-to-back firsts, witnessed by the friends he’d grown up with. Nolan got his own second dunk immediately after, which seeded the doctrine he’s preached ever since (Hunter can confirm he preaches it): once you make a dunk once, your brain believes it and your body remembers it, and the second comes fast. We’ve watched it hold true at a dozen sessions.

November 7, 2020: the session that summoned the pros

After bootlegged-program self-training (his words: insane volume he survived only because he was young) and summers with NFL-trainer Brad Fitzke, came the session that changed his trajectory, date memorized: November 7, 2020, age 17. Warming up in a sweatshirt he hit a one-hander that felt new, then caught a two-hander at roughly 10’7”, then ran off two Windmills, a between-the-legs, his first reverse two-hand Windmill, and the best double-pump he’s hit to this day, all in a three-hour session where the bounce never faded. He posted the mix, and his idols materialized in the comments: Isaiah Rivera, John from THP, Jonathan Clark, CJ Champion, all asking the same question: where did this guy come from? He joined THP within two weeks and told his mom it was the best day of his life. (His mom and her twin, his self-declared biggest fans, later flew to Utah camp sick as dogs and watched him dunk anyway. Family of the year.)

And then the caveat he insists every young dunker hear, because he lived the other side of it: after a breakthrough session, you will expect to jump like that every time, and you won’t. His very next session he chased a J Rich for an hour at the same hoop, strained his groin, and went home tearing himself apart. The peak session is a gift, not a baseline. Trend line, not session: the oldest lesson on this show, learned independently by everyone on it.

The injury, and the identity question underneath it

The reason Nolan missed camps and sessions over the years was a body that kept objecting, and in March it finally drew a hard line: a back injury serious enough that he hasn’t jumped on hardwood since that day, a first in his life. The middle of this episode, which you should hear in full rather than read summarized, is the conversation the dunk community mostly avoids: what happens to a dunker’s identity when the dunking stops. Hunter framed the perspective gently and well: dunking, however big, is a small part of a life that also requires walking, working, eating, and being a person, and Nolan has visibly done the work of building an identity that survives the injury.

The current status report is genuinely hopeful: relatively pain-free, golfing 36 holes multiple times a day (a back-dependent sport, as Hunter noted, swinging a club at speed is its own athletic certificate), and recently dragged into 3v3 turf volleyball by his best friend Aiden, where his first jump made both teams stop and say “wait, what?” The vert, it turns out, is still in there. A return to basketball is plausible; a full recommitment to dunking is an open question he’s honest about; and his standing offer to remain the community’s most willing podcast guest has been accepted in perpetuity.

Output versus input: the creativity sermon

The episode’s closing act became a three-way sermon I want on the record. Nolan’s thesis: the younger generation consumes endlessly and creates almost nothing, and a person who never outputs creative energy is missing something essential. His own outputs since the injury: golf content on TikTok, and, the detail I love most, 150 unreleased songs on a private Spotify rotation, made purely for himself, with a third album in the works. (His little cousins, camp attendees, are already the counter-example: one just hit his first dunk on 7’ and reports in regularly. The next generation creates.)

Hunter’s addition: creating for yourself first is also the growth strategy, because audiences smell authenticity, and the 2,000-follower creator doing it for love is often getting more out of it than the giants. And the unreleased-dunks reveal: Nolan has a private archive of dunks nobody has ever seen, filmed for his own consumption. I am now texting him daily until the documentary video exists, because it may genuinely be one of the best dunk videos ever assembled, and you, the comment section, are hereby deputized to help me pressure him.

Nolan is “Nolan R. Larson” on TikTok and Instagram; go watch the old mixes (start with November 7, 2020) and the new golf content. The music stays his, for now. Next episode: how I’m changing my training after turning 18. Peace.

This is episode 64 of the Dunk Talk Podcast, back on Zoom after too long. I’m Dylan Haugen, with Hunter Castona, and the guests are arguably the highest-jumping brothers on earth: Jordan Pimstone (episode 15 alum, 45-inch tester, now a full-time strength coach) and his younger brother Ethan: 6’1”, 22, Oak Park, California, and the most out-of-nowhere arrival the dunk community has seen in years. Hunter and I met Ethan at Dunk Camp 2025 the day he tested 47.5 inches and hit his first Eastbay within hours of each other, a sentence that should not be possible. This is the story of where he came from, which is, genuinely, nowhere.

The latest of late bloomers

Ethan’s childhood was every sport (lacrosse, soccer, baseball, flag football) with basketball on top: at 10 he was dropping 30 in rec leagues. Then puberty simply didn’t arrive. He entered high school at 5’4”, pre-pubescent, weak, corner-three-only, and his freshman season, where his literal goal was to touch the bottom of the backboard, was his last organized basketball. What followed, in his own cheerful telling, was the Fortnite era: 15 years old, ten hours a day gaming, the fluffiest and least active stretch of his life. The jumping gene was always there in the background (the Pimstone staircase still has stickers marking the brothers’ childhood max touches; they dove over pillows competitively), but dunking felt impossible enough that he didn’t bother dreaming it.

At 17, suddenly around six feet, two things happened: a first rim-grazer dunk, and, inspired by his perpetually-lifting brother, the weight room, where he went full bodybuilder for four years: surplus eating to the point of feeling sick, 200-plus pounds in the morning, light weights, high reps, mass at any cost. His stated life philosophy in that era, quoted to Jordan during their two-year argument: “I don’t care how high I jump. What’s jumping going to do for me in life? I want my legs to be big.”

The LA Fitness Zion years

Post-puberty, post-bodybuilding-bulk Ethan started playing pickup at LA Fitness and coming home with unverifiable legends: posters, hang-on-the-rim finishes, “mean things done to people,” all unrecorded, all dunked “like a big man”: two hands down, nothing fancy, no Windmill, no concept of trick dunks. He called himself the LA Fitness Zion. Jordan, already deep in the dunk world, heard the stories and begged him to train. Ethan refused. For two years.

Then one day Jordan dragged him to the training facility and tested him: 44.5 inches, in 2023, off zero jump training, just pickup basketball and bodybuilding. Jordan’s begging intensified; Ethan’s refusal continued, complicated by the detail Jordan supplied: Ethan’s knees were destroyed. He’d play for hours through pain that felt “like my knee was going to literally explode,” then be unable to climb stairs for a week, the untreated-hooper jumper’s-knee spiral we’ve documented on a dozen episodes. The holdout finally ended about eight months before this recording. He hasn’t looked back.

The strangest rehab in this podcast’s history: sprinter first

Here’s the wrinkle that makes the story unique: when Ethan finally let Jordan coach him, his goal wasn’t dunking. It was walking on as a Division I sprinter. So Jordan, now coaching full time, wrote what he describes as genuinely weird cycles: rehab the flared patellar tendons first (months of pure rehab; you can’t sprint at max intent on knees that angry), then build sprint volume and frequency, with timing gates at the facility Ethan now works at confirming he was genuinely in the D1 conversation, all while quietly progressing the lifts and jumps Jordan knew were the real destiny. Speed and jumping travel together, and Jordan was patiently building both while letting his brother chase the track dream.

Ethan’s confession about the rehab period is the most relatable part: like every athlete, he didn’t fully listen. He’d sneak off to play basketball mid-rehab and set himself back a month at a time, because flared tendons are exactly that fragile. The lesson he learned the expensive way is the one Ben’s episode and Finn’s episode keep teaching: the rehab timeline is the timeline.

Dunk Camp 2025: a 47.5 and the most absurd first Eastbay ever

The brothers’ plan was to debut together at Dunk Camp 2025; Jordan’s back spasms flared four days out and he missed it, so Ethan arrived alone, knowing literally nobody (no dunk Instagram, no community contacts, recognizing only Isaiah and Kilganon from afar), expecting to be satisfied with a 45. He tested 47.5. The same day, he hit his first Eastbay ever, while touching over 12 feet, prompting Jordan’s claim on this episode that Ethan may own the highest max touch before a first Eastbay in human history, seven-footers possibly excepted. Hunter and I were standing right there, and the gym’s collective reaction was the correct one: who is this guy?

Ethan’s review of the week echoes every first-timer’s: he had no idea a community this tight-knit existed, the experience exceeded anything he imagined, and he’s going back. The test also flipped the internal switch the years of begging never had: “I really need to lock in on this. This could be something serious.” The title number is already real: the 48 has since arrived, and given that he is at most eight months into actual jump training, atop a bodybuilder’s strength base and sprinter’s speed, the ceiling conversation here is genuinely uncomfortable. The 50 club should check the locks.

The bag problem (a good problem)

Ethan’s current state is the inverse of most dunkers: world-class bounce, nearly empty bag. He never low-rimmed (Jordan did, as a kid; Ethan only chased touch height), never windmilled in the LA Fitness era, never considered a 360. Which makes him this show’s favorite kind of project: as we keep saying, 99 percent of dunkers have dunks available at their current vertical that they simply haven’t repped, and Ethan has roughly all of them available. Every session for the next two years is a new-dunk session if he wants it to be. With Jordan coaching him daily and the brothers’ combined documentation now flowing (he finally has the Instagram), the come-up is going to happen in public, fast.

Follow both Pimstones; the brother-vs-brother vertical race alone is worth it (Jordan’s 45 is officially under siege from inside the house). Next episode is Nolan Larson on injury, identity, and the love of dunking. Peace out.