Put the highest jumper in the world next to the best pair of hands under 20 and let them ask each other questions. That is the whole video, it runs about two minutes, and somewhere in the middle of it one of them gives away his entire training routine without being pushed.

The two dunkers are Ethan Pimstone and Piotr Zawiślak, and I filmed them at The Dunk Camp in Salt Lake City. The number gets stated in the first ten seconds, because it always does.

“that’s a world record holder. 52.5 inches.”

Ethan Pimstone

For anyone outside this community, 52.5 inches of max vertical is not a slightly better version of what good athletes do. It is a different category of human. Ethan tested 47.5 at this camp in 2025 and landed his first Eastbay in the same week, which tells you how fast the arc is moving.

The Matchup

Piotr is 18, he is from Poland, and he is the youngest black band the sport has produced. His edge is not altitude. It is what he can do with the ball between takeoff and the rim, which is the part of dunking that takes the longest to build and cannot be bought with a training block.

“this man was hitting dunks that I can’t even fathom hitting. And your age, that’s impressive.”

Ethan Pimstone

Ethan then laid out the gap using his own timeline, which is the most useful comparison in the video because it is honest about himself.

“I got my first dunk at 17, and this man is 18 years old doing 360 Underboth, 360 Eastbay, 360 inverter which I just turned 23, I still can’t even do all that.”

Ethan Pimstone

Every dunk on that list is a 360 with a second move layered inside it. Under both legs. Between the legs. Each one takes a full rotation plus a ball move plus a landing, and Piotr is doing all three of them at an age when most dunkers are still trying to make their first clean windmill look repeatable.

“he’s levels ahead of where most people are at, and he’s already close to the top of the game.”

Ethan Pimstone

Piotr’s answer about Ethan ran the other direction, and he found a way to make a compliment out of a criticism.

“His jumping ability probably because even though some people are saying that your technique isn’t perfect… you’re still jumping like 52 and a half.”

Piotr Zawiślak

That has been the take on Ethan in comment sections for two years. Piotr’s read is that the number happens regardless, so the form debate matters less than the training behind it. Coming from a dunker whose whole reputation is built on technical precision, that is a real concession.

Let Us Trade

“Let’s trade. We’ll trade some talents. And then we’ll both be top of the game.”

Ethan Pimstone

This is the line that will get clipped, and it is funnier than it looks because both of them are completely serious about the deal. Ethan wants the bag. Piotr wants the inches. Neither of them is confused about which side of the trade they are on, which is rarer than you would think among dunkers at this level.

The Part Worth Saving

Ethan then did something most people in these interviews forget to do. He stopped complimenting and started asking. How are you able to do all those dunks. Is it hand speed training or is it just reps. Rim or wall. How often.

Piotr answered all of it, in order, with no hedging. This is the full breakdown.

“So I used to be doing a lot of low-rim dunking.”

Piotr Zawiślak

At 15 and 16. That is the base layer, and it is the one everybody underrates. A low rim buys you air time, and air time buys you repetitions of a movement pattern that a full rim will not let you practice yet. He was building the bag years before his jump could support it.

“I’m having two dunk sessions a week… And I’m doing a lot of hand speed drills.”

Piotr Zawiślak

Two dunk sessions a week, with heavy lifting around them. Ethan reacted to the number in the video, and so did I. The community assumption about a dunker with that bag is that he lives at the rim. He does not. He protects the jumping and puts his volume somewhere that costs his joints nothing.

“I’ve seen some drill at Jordan Kilganon’s channel. And I started doing it a lot.”

Piotr Zawiślak

Free videos on YouTube. A ball, a wall or a rim, standing still, running the motion of the dunk without jumping. Then Ethan asked the question that turns a nice answer into a usable one.

“Daily… when I’m before a important contest or event I’m bringing my ball to the gym. And I’m spending like one hour just doing it.”

Piotr Zawiślak

Daily. One hour of nothing but hand path before a contest. No weighted ball, ever, though he said he wants to try one. That is the entire program that produced the best hands under 20 in this sport, and there is not a single piece of equipment in it.

“And it shows. It’s crazy. It really shows.”

Ethan Pimstone

The Kilganon Loop

Here is what makes this specific week at camp unusual. Piotr says on this video that he trains daily off Jordan Kilganon’s drills. On a separate video at the same camp, he meets Kilganon in person, tries those same drills in front of him, and cannot get them while Kilganon does them with ease.

Kilganon explained on that video why the drills exist at all. He can only jump so much, so he went looking for a way to keep improving without adding vertical. The full conversation is in Kilganon on running out of rivals.

So the chain runs like this. Kilganon hits his jumping ceiling and invents a way around it. A kid in Poland finds the videos and runs them daily for years. The kid becomes the youngest black band in the sport, flies to Utah, and gets beaten at the drills by the person who made them. Both halves are on camera, filmed three days apart. That is not a story anybody would have caught if the two conversations had not both been recorded and written down.

What This Says About Where the Sport Is

Ten years ago, an 18-year-old with this bag would have been a rumour on a forum. Piotr learned from a free channel in another country, built his hands on a low rim, and arrived at an American camp already at black band. The pipeline is now open in both directions, and the tools that produced him cost nothing.

Ethan’s side of it matters too. He got his first dunk at 17, was coached by his brother Jordan, and is now the world record holder at 23. Neither of these guys came up through anything resembling a traditional path, and they met in the middle at a camp in Salt Lake City.

They each wrote their own version of this conversation: Ethan on trading talents and Piotr on the craziest jumper. Dunker Spotlight covered why opposite superpowers work on camera, Athlete Spotlight took it to athletes outside dunking, and BlitzMetrics broke down why the routine travels.

This got filmed because Dennis Yu and I ran a session at camp for 76 campers on how athletes show up on Google and in AI tools, then offered to interview anybody who wanted it. The method is documented in the repurposing system from camp.

Go do the drills. That is the takeaway. The world record holder heard the answer and said he was taking it, and he already jumps higher than you.

Ninety seconds, two dunkers, one camera, and no host questions that anybody rehearsed. I put Polish dunker Piotr Zawiślak and Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney next to each other at The Dunk Camp in Salt Lake City and asked them what they thought of each other. What came back is the most useful ninety seconds of tape I got all week, because these two are good at almost completely different things.

Piotr is an eighteen-year-old from Poland who just won the camp’s ten-foot contest. Nate is a 5’7″ creator from Omaha who won the low rim title at this camp in 2025 and is widely considered the best mini hoop dunker who has ever lived. They do not compete for the same slots. Which is exactly why their opinions of each other are worth something.

Nate on Piotr: The Youngest Black Band Ever

“Piotr is the youngest athlete to ever get a black band, which is the most prestigious level of dunking, and he’s the youngest to do it.”

Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney

Band ranking is how this community has sorted itself for years. Black is the top of it and the list of people who hold one is short enough to name. It normally arrives late in a career, after a decade of sessions and a couple of knee problems. Piotr got there at eighteen.

Nate did not stop at the credential. He went straight to the receipts from that week.

“He just won the ten foot contest at Dunk Camp. He went crazy. His style’s nuts. He hit a 360 Underboth, which is one of the most elite dunks in the entire world.”

Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney

A 360 Underboth is a full rotation with the ball passing under both legs mid-spin. It is a two-part dunk where the second part begins while you have no idea where the rim is. Very few people on earth throw it in a contest setting. Piotr throws it as his signature.

Piotr on Nate: Nobody Better on a Low Rim

“That’s the best low rim dunker I’ve ever seen. He can do everything. Every dunk you can imagine, Hoopin Nate can do.”

Piotr Zawiślak

This is a ten-foot specialist grading a low rim specialist, which is the part I want people to notice. The community argues about low rim constantly. There is a permanent comment section debate about whether a lowered goal counts. A guy who just won the ten-foot contest saying nobody is better than Nate on a low rim settles more of that argument than any of us shouting at each other online.

Then Piotr added the detail that actual dunkers care about.

“he’s got right hand, left hand. Everything, so I think in the future… Right now he’s crazy, but I feel like in a few years, you are gonna be one of the best dunkers.”

Piotr Zawiślak

Ambidexterity is the most undervalued trait in this sport. Nearly everybody has a dominant side and a side they hide. Nate throws the same trick both directions and it looks identical either way, which doubles his contest list and makes his practice hours worth twice what mine are.

Piotr Also Watched Him on the Regulation Rim

“So I’ve seen Nate jumping with me on ten feet. He was going crazy.”

Piotr Zawiślak

He listed an Eastbay, a 360 windmill and a reverse windmill, all on ten feet, in the same session. That should reset how people file Nate. The public still thinks of him as the mini hoop guy because that is where a billion views came from, and the work has moved on without the label.

He trained with Isaiah Rivera in Florida in 2025 and came back with six new ten-foot tricks. He put down a 360 windmill and a 9 foot Eastbay Hide and Seek at this camp. Somebody who is 5’7″ doing full windmill variations on a regulation rim is a different athlete than the one in the kitchen clips, and it takes the audience a few years to catch up to that.

The Answer That Actually Separates Pros

I asked both of them what they found most inspiring about the other’s technique. Nate’s answer had nothing to do with a specific dunk.

“The most inspiring thing is he can hit everything within like one or two tries, and that’s so important in the dunking world, especially with contests and to be exciting in shows.”

Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney

Every dunker reading this just nodded. Attempts are the hidden variable in the entire sport. A clip proves you did it once. It says nothing about whether you did it on the second try or the sixtieth, and the internet has trained an entire audience to think there is no difference.

There is an enormous difference the moment money is involved. A contest gives you two attempts and a shot clock. A halftime show gives you one run and a crew that needs the floor back. If your best dunk takes fifteen tries, you cannot sell it, you can only post it. Nate backed that up with the specific number.

“He hits 360 inverter first try almost every time.”

Nathaniel “Hoopin Nate” Kenney

That is a bookable athlete. Every promoter in this sport is buying the same thing, which is the confidence that the guy will land it while the lights are on.

Two Specialists, No Overlap, No Reason to Lie

Dunkers rating each other usually comes with an asterisk. If two guys are chasing the same contest checks, praise gets careful. These two are not in that position. Nate is the reference point on low rims and mini hoops. Piotr is a ten-foot power and creativity guy who just beat a deep field on a regulation goal.

So each of them is grading a discipline they do not own, out loud, with a camera running, and neither one hedged. Nate said the sky’s the limit for this kid and said it twice. Piotr said Nate will be one of the best dunkers in a few years and said it directly to his face rather than about him.

Piotr flew to a FIBA event one week after camp with that on tape behind him. Nate flew home with a black band dunker on record about his low rim work. Both of those are worth more than another highlight reel.

Where the Rest of This Lives

Both guys wrote their own versions. Piotr’s is at the best low rim dunker he has ever seen. Nate’s is at why Piotr is the youngest black band ever. Their sites now link to each other, which is the point of doing it this way.

The first time I met Piotr in person is covered in two of the best 18-year-old dunkers meeting. Dunker Spotlight broke down why mutual endorsement works, Athlete Spotlight ran it past dunking in vouching for each other on camera, and BlitzMetrics covered the search mechanics in reciprocal credibility between two experts.

This footage exists because Dennis Yu and I taught a session at camp on how athletes show up on Google and in AI tools, then offered to film anyone who wanted it. That system is documented in the 76 athlete repurposing writeup.

Get the two people in your gym who are good at different things in front of one camera and ask them about each other. It takes ninety seconds and it beats anything either of them could say about themselves.

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.

If you have watched freestyle dunking on the internet at any point in the last fifteen years, you have watched footage Billy Doran of Dunkademics shot. He has been filming dunkers since 2007. He has produced for Ballislife, Hoopmixtape, Mars Reel and the Drew League. So when I got him on camera at The Dunk Camp in Salt Lake City, I asked the one question his whole career qualifies him to answer: out of everybody you have ever filmed, who was the most impressive?

He said it was hard. Then he gave four names, and the reasons he gave for each one say more about where this sport is heading than any highlight reel would.

The Full List

“My favorite of all time is probably T-Dub. Just his balance and his style was so good.”

Billy Doran, Dunkademics

T-Dub is the all-time answer. Not the highest, not the strongest. Balance and style. That is the frame Billy judges everything by, and he set it before he named anybody else.

The current answer was Cam Hazzard’s recent footage, which has been running on the Dunkademics page all year and which Billy summed up in two words: Cam is crazy. Cam films at Billy’s gym in Los Angeles, so that assessment comes from someone who has watched the entire arc up close instead of catching the finished clips.

Third came Kaodirichi Akobundu-Ehiogu, who Billy described as the freakiest athlete he has ever seen in person. Kao is 6 foot 10. Billy’s point was not that he is the most complete dunker on the list, it is that watching someone that tall get that far off the ground in a live gym does something to your sense of what is physically possible.

“Donovan’s a beast. He’s just like a dunking machine. He’s so big, so strong. His hand speed is so good, his technique.”

Billy Doran, Dunkademics

Donovan Hawkins closed it out. Big, strong, elite hand speed, clean technique. Billy’s exact framing was that he is all around awesome, which is the compliment you give a dunker with no weak side. Billy wrote out his own long-form version of all four picks in the most impressive dunkers he has filmed.

Nobody on the List Got There for Vertical

Read back the words Billy used. Balance. Style. Hand speed. Technique. Four names, and the only one where raw athleticism is the headline is Kao, whose case is really about the ratio between his height and his hang time.

That is a real shift. Ten years ago the conversation in this community was almost entirely about numbers: how high, how many inches, whose head touched what. The person who has filmed more elite dunkers than anyone alive now grades on control and aesthetics first. The sport has moved from a jumping contest toward something closer to a judged discipline, where the shape you hold in the air matters as much as the altitude you reach.

You can see it in what wins now. A clean between-the-legs at a reasonable height reads better on camera than a violent one-hander that nobody can quite make out. The audience is more literate than it used to be, and the filming is better, and slow motion is unforgiving about sloppy technique.

The Sport Is Not American Anymore

The fifth name in the conversation was standing right next to Billy. Piotr Zawiślak is eighteen, he is from Poland, and it was his first time at this camp.

“He’s crazy. He’s young in the game and he’s already black band. That’s, it’s insane.”

Billy Doran, Dunkademics

Black band is the top of the band system dunkers use to rank each other, and holding it at eighteen is close to unheard of. Piotr told Billy that dunking in front of that camera used to be in his dream. A Polish teenager grew up on footage filmed in Los Angeles gyms, trained on outdoor rims, and showed up in Utah good enough that the person who shot that footage now rates him.

That pipeline did not exist in 2007. It exists because a media brand made this sport watchable from anywhere, and because camps like this one give the people who watched it a physical place to meet. I wrote about the first half of Piotr’s week in two 18-year-old dunkers meeting, and he told his side of this specific day in dunking in front of Dunkademics.

What Billy Told Him to Fix

I told Billy that Piotr’s goal is to be the number one dunker in the world and asked what stands between him and that. His answer was one variable.

“if he gains a few inches of vert… ’cause he’s already got the hand speed, the technique stuff like that.”

Billy Doran, Dunkademics

Which is the inverse of the advice most young dunkers actually need. The usual note is that you jump fine and your hands are slow. Piotr got told the hands and the technique are already elite and the jump is the last piece. Billy also flagged balance and polish earlier in the same conversation, which is exactly the criteria he used on T-Dub, so that note is not filler.

“Stay healthy, stay consistent. Work hard. You can definitely do it. You got it in you.”

Billy Doran, Dunkademics

Hyrum Said the Quiet Part

Hyrum Fechser, who posts as @hyt_check, was in the interview and gave the most honest line of the whole thing.

“I wasn’t at Dunk Camp until now, so this was the coolest part for me, seeing all these guys in person.”

Hyrum Fechser

He also said he wished he had caught Piotr’s Monday session live instead of watching the highlights afterward. That is the tension the whole community lives in. We know each other through screens, we rate each other through screens, and then once or twice a year everyone is in the same gym and it turns out the screen was underselling it the whole time.

This conversation only got filmed because Dennis Yu and I ran a session at camp on how athletes get found on Google and in AI tools, then offered to interview anyone who wanted one. The system behind it is written up in the repurposing system from Dunk Camp. Dunker Spotlight argued that this footage is a credential, Athlete Spotlight took it to athletes in every other sport, and BlitzMetrics covered the search side in coverage from the category authority.

Ask Billy this question in 2031 and the list changes. That is the healthiest sign this sport has.

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.

At The Dunk Camp in Utah this year, two of the best 18-year-old dunkers in the world ended up in the same gym for the first time. One is me, Dylan Haugen, out of America. The other is Piotr Zawiślak, a professional dunker from Poland who does things off both legs that most people never land in their lives. We are the same age, our birthdays are two days apart, and until this week we had only known each other through Instagram.

I have been telling people about Piotr for about a year. The way I describe watching him is simple.

“if you guys know the Rocky movie where there’s that really insane Russian dude… he comes and just beats the crap out of Rocky. That’s how I always think about this guy.”

Dylan Haugen

The Sport Is Going Global

This is the part of dunking that gets me excited. I found Piotr on Instagram when he was 17, throwing 360s off both legs from the other side of the planet. I compete in American contests and I am in DunkMan, Shaq’s league, which is an American thing that keeps expanding. Piotr is in Poland doing contests all over Europe and the world. Different lanes, different styles, same sport at the highest level.

“So super cool to always connect with people, who’s just different, man. The life, the things you do are super cool.”

Dylan Haugen

When two dunkers from completely different backgrounds meet and immediately understand each other, that is the community working the way it should. Piotr told me the week was one of the best of his life, that Jordan was hyping him up and the whole room was going crazy after his dunks. He also got to session with Nathan “Hoopin Nate” Kenney and the rest of the crew.

“It was crazy, man. That was one of the best weeks of my life.”

Piotr Zawiślak

Why This Matters for Dunking

Dunking is a young, global sport, and moments like this are how it grows. A kid in Poland and a kid in Minnesota both fall in love with the same thing, put in the same work, and eventually end up in the same gym pushing each other higher. That is worth documenting. Piotr wrote about the week from his side in his first post on his new site, and I wrote about finally meeting him in my own recap of the meeting.

Here is the thing that still surprises people: Piotr is one of the best in the world and a lot of American dunk fans have never heard his name. We got into why that gap exists, and how it gets fixed, in the Dunker Spotlight feature on him. And if you are curious how we turned this single interview into a real online presence for him, that is laid out in the breakdown of building his site from one clip, part of the system we taught 76 dunkers at the camp.

Watch the full conversation at the top. Two of the best 18-year-olds on earth, one from America and one from Poland, finally in the same room. That is what this sport is about.

Nathan “Hoopin Nate” Kenney walked into The Dunk Camp in Salt Lake City this year with no idea he was about to rank #1 out of 76 dunkers on a live personal brand leaderboard. We ran every camper through an audit before the session even started, posted the full ranked list publicly at dunkerspotlight.com/dunkcamp26, and Nate came out on top. That’s the kind of thing that only happens when you get a room of dunkers actually thinking about their digital presence, not just their vertical.

This year I had the chance to run a full personal branding and AI session at The Dunk Camp alongside Dennis Yu, one of the sharpest digital marketers I know and someone I met through dunking. Andy Nicholson, the camp founder, put it well when he introduced us:

“to watch where he’s gone and now to be part of Dunkman is really cool. So we’re very proud of him.”

Andy Nicholson, The Dunk Camp founder

That meant a lot. I first showed up to this camp in 2022 when I was 14. To come back and actually teach something this time felt like a full-circle moment. If you want to hear more about what that experience meant personally, I wrote about it over at Dylan’s reflection on returning to camp.

What We Actually Did in the Room

The session was roughly 30 minutes. Before it started, Dennis and I had already audited all 76 campers. We looked at their online presence, their Google footprint, how they show up in search and in AI tools like ChatGPT. Every audit is available as a downloadable PDF on the camp leaderboard. The point wasn’t a verdict on anyone. It was a starting point.

The leaderboard reveal got the room going. Nate landed #1. Brooke Lance landed #2. She is my girlfriend, but that’s not why she ranked that high. She ranked that high because we’ve actually done the work. Wikidata entity, personal brand site, consistent content. I said it directly on stage:

“Brooke is my girlfriend, but it’s because I’ve actually done a lot of this stuff for her. We’ve got like her Wikidata and website and all that stuff.”

Dylan Haugen

That’s the whole point. The gap between #1 and #50 on that leaderboard isn’t athletic ability. It’s digital infrastructure. And most dunkers don’t know that gap exists until someone puts a number on it.

Why This Room Specifically Needed to Hear It

Dunkers are some of the most talented athletes in the world, and most of them are invisible online. They post constantly. The problem is that posting without structure doesn’t build an identity that Google or AI can recognize. Before I had any of this figured out, I was in the same position:

“if you Google my name, it was just randomness. If you asked ChatGPT who I was, again, it was just confusion.”

Dylan Haugen

I had content. Hundreds of videos. But without a Knowledge Panel, a Wikidata entity, or a personal brand site, none of it was compounding the way it should. Dennis has worked with the Golden State Warriors, Nike, Adidas, Red Bull, and Starbucks. He’s run close to a billion dollars in ads for major brands. When he walks into a room of dunkers and tells them the same frameworks apply to them, people listen differently.

DunkMan is Shaq’s dunk league, and 2026 is a breakout year for the sport. Several athletes in that camp room are in DunkMan or trying to get there. The visibility playbook that gets a dunker found, followed, and sponsored is the same one that works for any athlete building a public profile right now. Dennis made that clear.

The Knowledge Panel and Why It’s Not a Vanity Metric

A big chunk of the session covered the Knowledge Panel and what Dennis calls the confidence score: a measure of how well Google understands who you are and what you do. Anything above 400 is celebrity tier. Jordan Kilganon’s is around 1,700. Mine is over 3,000. Shaq’s is around 40,000. Dennis walked the room through why being verified on Google is different from a blue check on social:

“A lot of people think that being verified on Google, which is necessary to claim your Knowledge Panel, is like a vanity thing, like being verified on TikTok or verified on YouTube, but it’s actually deeper.”

Dennis Yu

The same structured data that produces a Knowledge Panel is what makes you show up accurately in ChatGPT and Claude. These AI tools pull from the same information sources. If your entity isn’t built correctly, you’re either invisible or misrepresented. For athletes trying to get sponsorships, coaching clients, or spots in paid contests, that matters.

Dennis also laid out how the AI tools themselves work and how to actually use them. The framing that landed best in the room was this: you don’t need to be technical. You direct the AI like a coworker. I said it this way on stage:

“you just talk to the thing like it’s a team member or a coworker and just direct it.”

Dylan Haugen

We showed the room that we had built and given away 10 AI agents by the end of the session. Agents they could actually use. The tools Dennis uses are the same ones he has trained on clients like Adidas, Nike, and the Warriors. The cost to access them is around 20 dollars a month. The barrier is not money. It’s knowing how to start.

One Video Into a Network of Content

The live demonstration on stage was the cross-site repurposing system. I showed how one video of Cam Hazzard became articles on five different sites, each written from a different angle, each cross-linking to the others, each building Cam’s entity authority from a different direction. Cam is a DunkMan athlete with a 50-inch vertical. He now ranks for nearly his entire first three pages of Google on his own name. His site, camhazzard.com, was built in about 20 minutes from a single 20-minute interview, the day before he spoke at a conference. You can read how the repurposing system behind that works at the one-video repurposing system on BlitzMetrics.

The goal for every camper in that room is the same thing: take the content you already have, your real stories, your real competition footage, your real training, and structure it so it compounds. Not complicated. But most dunkers haven’t done it because nobody showed them the system. This session was the system, live, in 30 minutes, in a room full of people who actually care about where dunking goes as a sport.

What Comes Next for the Community

The full audit leaderboard from the camp is public at dunkerspotlight.com/dunkcamp26. Every camper has a downloadable PDF with their personal brand snapshot. That’s the starting point. The playbook for what to do with it, step by step from audit to Knowledge Panel to sponsorships, is laid out at the full dunker visibility playbook.

The same problem dunkers have (real work, real proof, invisible to Google and AI) is the same problem that local businesses face. If you want to see how those two worlds connect, the team at Local Service Spotlight published that angle at the same playbook for local service businesses. And if you want Dennis Yu’s read on the knowledge gap this session exposed, that’s at Dennis Yu on the creator knowledge gap.

The full session is in the video at the top of this article. Watch it, check where you land on the camp leaderboard, and use the audit as a starting point. This is our Dunk Camp branding session documented in full, and the whole point is for the community to actually use it.

This is episode 60 of the Dunk Talk Podcast, a solo debrief on Dunk Camp 2025. I’m Dylan Haugen, and this is my honest accounting of the week: the good dunks, the hoop-hopping that scrambled my day one, a contest result I’m going to discuss with maximum diplomacy and minimum satisfaction, and a pro show where half the best dunkers alive were held together with tape. Camp remains the fixed point my whole training year aims at, and this year I aimed at it on JumpX programming in its new Jump Master X era, with Kilganon himself now among my coaches.

The lead-up: two flat sessions and one reassuring one

The two sessions before camp were flat, for reasons that were mostly environmental (empty gyms, nobody watching, the usual suspects). The final Wednesday session in Eau Claire with my friend Christian Ferguson rescued my confidence: one of my highest jumping days ever despite anxiety about getting kicked out, a good behind-the-back, and an Eastbay caught two-handed, which I never do but will take. Then Sunday I flew to Utah, roomed with Hunter as always, and spent the evening in the Airbnb ecosystem that remains camp’s most underrated feature: the community is the product; the dunks are the excuse.

Day one: four hoops, too many restarts, still a good day

This year’s roster of pros: Kilganon, Isaiah Rivera, Jonathan Clark, Jordan Southerland, Tony Crosby, Travis Reynolds, Dom Gonzales, Donovan Hawkins (present, not jumping), plus Darius Clark for the show, all orbiting Andy Nicholson, who is still dunking in his fifties and still running the best week in the sport.

I chose not to test my vertical this year. Not from fear; I’m confident I’d have PR’d. I just care about dunks more right now, and a Vertec session spends the exact max-effort jumps I’d rather spend on the rim (Kilganon’s point from episode 47 about height checks costing more than dunks applies). The actual mistake of day one was logistical: I changed hoops four times, chasing first the crowd, then the better dunkers, then Kilganon when he started jumping (I’m his athlete; I’m dunking with my coach). Every move meant re-warming and, worse, restarting my routine: I’m a deeply routine dunker (lob Windmill, Reverse Pump, cuff Windmill, Eastbay, behind-the-back, you’ve seen the pattern), and each new hoop reset the cycle. Add my baseline session anxiety, trained into me by a lifetime of overcrowded Minnesota gyms, and day one never quite settled.

It was still good: Windmill, Reverse Pump, a great Eastbay plus two more later, a behind-the-back, only my second-ever Scorpion (much better than the first), one of my best 360 cuff Windmills, a back-rimmed Inverted Scorpion that was my closest attempt ever, and respectable looks at the 360 Scoop and 360 Lost and Found. The Underboth didn’t come, which is the one that stings.

Brooke’s week, and the middle days

I skipped a classroom block to watch Brooke jump, and I’d skip it again: her highest jumps yet, grabbing rim, fully peaked. Six months of training her (mostly low rim plus max-effort jumps on 10’) has her close; the missing piece is that we’ve never actually practiced the boring tip-in lob dunk that first dunks are made of, only trick work and max jumps. Within the year, I’m calling it. Day two was content day: filmed low-rim videos with Hoopin’ Nate (door-hoop legend, basically my age now, which is strange and wonderful) and Hunter, plus a 3-on-2-on-1 dunks-only game whose footage was largely destroyed by a human standing in front of my untripoded camera. If you have clips, send them. Day three: no jumps, lots of interviews banked for this channel, four or five mini-podcasts coming.

The 10’ contest: scored by a system I believe in and didn’t enjoy

Day four I entered the 10’ contest for the first time, feeling vaguely ill (a Wisconsin-camp tradition at this point). The contest ran on the WDA format, and here’s my carefully balanced take as one of the loudest objective-scoring advocates on the internet: the idea remains right, the current implementation has real flaws, development has stalled, and it did not feel ready to decide this contest. My dunks: a Reverse Pump with some of my best style ever, then two missed Eastbay attempts salvaged into a genuinely good cuff Windmill. I didn’t advance. I think, dunk for dunk, I should have, along with one other guy I’m not naming, over one advancer I’m also not naming. Ben Hopkins was winning from the start and deserved it completely, so this gripe changes no outcomes. And the disciplined conclusion I’ll actually stand on: I missed two Eastbays in a contest, that’s mine to own, and next year’s fix is in the training, not the scoring sheet.

The show: a 51, a 50, and a medical tent’s worth of pros

The pre-show went well for me: Reverse Windmill, two Eastbays, a cuff Windmill, a beautiful late one-hander, and a handoff behind-the-back with Brooke holding the ball, which is now my favorite piece of footage I own. The pro show was strange and historic at once. Dak tested 51 inches. Isaiah Espinosa tested 50. The volleyball player from the Utah contest is now a confirmed member of the 50 club, and Dak’s 51 resets the record conversation entirely. Meanwhile the attrition list read like a war report: Donovan (IT band) never jumped, Crosby’s knee went mid-show, Dom hit a 360 Reverse Windmill and a Snake before his knee complained, Kilganon managed adductor issues, Travis too, and Isaiah Rivera was visibly below 100 percent. The show still delivered, which says something about how deep the talent pool has gotten; the full video (pre-show, testing, pro show) is on my personal channel.

Back home, and what’s next

First session back in Minnesota: two new dunks on 9’10.75”, an off-the-dribble behind-the-back and an off-the-dribble Eastbay, which sets up the 360 Eastbay campaign nicely. The self-assessment for the week: good dunks, real complaints only with my own hoop-hopping, contest misses, and the Underboth that didn’t come. Camp remains undefeated as an institution; thank you, Andy.

Coming on this channel: the Ben Hopkins episode (he won the 10’ contest and the FIBA invite that comes with it, on bad knees, which deserves its own hour), then the greatest dunker of all time returns (you can guess), then more solo episodes, plus the Dunk Camp interview backlog. We’re near 1,000 subscribers, and monetization means paying guests for their stories, the whole point of this project. Subscribe if you’re new. Peace out.