Daniel Castellani

Daniel Castellani is a 6’3″ dunker from Melbourne, Australia, and he has been on a basketball court since he was about six. Both of his parents did track and field, which he credits for the bounce. He remembers a doctor’s office at around seven, hearing he would probably grow to about 6’4″, and telling his mum that meant he was going to dunk; he assumed he would have to wait until he was 18. He touched rim in eighth grade at 14, started throwing himself at hundreds of bodyweight squats with no idea what technique was, and got his first dunk at the end of that year.

Progress after that was self-taught and lumpy. A basketball trainer gave him ACL rehab work for balance, tendon stiffness and coordination, which he credits with a few inches and, more importantly, with teaching him how to land. Ninth grade brought his first one-footer, and the end of that year his first windmill, 360 and back scratcher. Tenth grade was slower, and it was when knee pain arrived, bad enough that he could not go downstairs without six or seven out of ten pain.

Then COVID hit in year 11 and Melbourne went into one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, which turned out to be the hinge of the story. Stuck at home with online school, he did three-hour workouts three days a week and then went to the park for pickup until sundown, because indoor gyms were shut. It was out there that he stopped trying to bring a between-the-legs up off the dribble and started lobbing it to himself for a full arm swing. When the gyms reopened and tryouts came around, he had unloaded from all that volume and, at about 17, punched an Eastbay he had chased for over a year.

University changed the scale. A Melbourne dunk group took him in and gave him permission to fail; he had been terrified of jumping over someone, and says their encouragement is where most of his growth came from. Around the same time his tendon pain got bad enough that he paid for THP, Isaiah Rivera‘s program, and did not miss a workout for at least six months. His jump did not spike, but his sessions stopped swinging, and the weight room moved from barely squatting 60 kilos for five to a 308-pound back squat and a 253-pound power clean.

The dunks stacked from late 2022: first double up in October, first behind the back in November, then reps into Jordan Kilganon‘s Cannonball and Sunrise, the Whirlwind, and a run of dunks off the side of the backboard that click with him better than anything else. His best stretch came at the end of 2023: Eastbay off the side, Eastbay off the board, two-hand Eastbay and underboth, all inside about six weeks.

His contest record started badly and got good. Shooters Shoot in December 2022 went nowhere; he took third at Summer Jam, Melbourne’s biggest; his first win came in Sydney in the rain, after organizers offered a choice between cancelling and dunking immediately on a soaked court. The one he talks about is the Elevate League. He had hit his first underboth only a month earlier and had daydreamed about pulling it out with his back against the wall; when the round came down to exactly that, he hit it on the third attempt and got swallowed by the crowd. Winning sent him into the international contest alongside Chris Staples and Tyler Currie. He told Dylan and co-host Hunter Castona he is coming for the Black Band, a 405 squat, and eventually the 360 double between the legs, which he calls the impossible standard.