This is episode 19 of the Dunk Talk Podcast and the first in-person interview I’ve recorded with a guest. I’m Dylan Haugen, sitting at my co-host Hunter Castona’s place in Wisconsin for Dunk Camp 2024, with Dominic “Dom Dunks” Gonzales. Dom is 20 years old, 5’8”, and a working professional dunker out of California. He tested a 47-inch vertical at peak. He just did his pro debut at the Sacramento Kings halftime against Newt Williams. He came up entirely through low-rim work between ages 12 and 16, made the jump to 10’, joined THP after a DM from Isaiah Rivera, and has been the standout 5’8” dunker in the world for most of the last three years.
Brothers, NBA impersonations, and a door hoop
Dom started playing basketball at five years old. His main hooks were Russell Westbrook highlights, Michael Jordan compilations, and Nate Robinson (because Dom was always going to be short and Nate was the proof of concept). He had a door hoop in his house and would replicate NBA dunks on it through middle school. He had no idea pro dunking was a thing. It was just basketball with a creative-mode toggle.
The thing that turned a normal kid’s basketball habit into the bag he has now: his two older brothers Dante and Dane. Dom would tell them “name an NBA player and I’ll do their style.” They’d call out Russell Westbrook, he’d try a one-hand Tomahawk and ask if it looked like him. If yes, move on. If no, try again. They eventually ran through the entire NBA roster. The minute they ran out of NBA players, Dom started creating his own dunks. That’s where the bag actually came from.
The other moment Dom cites as a real ignition point: an All-Star Weekend halftime when his oldest brother Dante said “let’s have a dunk contest outside.” Dom was too short and too unathletic to dunk on the low rim at the time. Dante did a Michael Jordan free-throw-line dunk from inside the key on a 7’6” rim. Dom’s reaction: “I want to do that.” From there it was every day after school, every day, on that 7’6” rim. Years.
First dunk at 16 (and a 37″ vertical with zero training)
Dom touched the rim for the first time during a sophomore-year basketball practice. He didn’t think it was a big deal. Everyone else did. He went home, kept low-rim dunking, and finally landed his first real 10’ dunk at 16 around July of his junior year, at roughly 5’6”. He’d done zero structured strength training at this point. His vertical at the first dunk was around 37 inches just from years of low-rim volume plus general athleticism.
The path from there to a 47-inch peak took four years on THP. The standing vertical climbed too. 32″ at his first Dunk Camp in 2021, mid-30s by Dunk Camp 2022. He squats around 365 at a half-depth peak, 405 box squat for reps at depth, power cleans 185. Solid numbers for a 5’8” dunker who came in with zero weight-room background.
The Isaiah DM and the start of THP
The thing that really opened up Dom’s career was a DM from Isaiah Rivera in September 2021. Isaiah saw Dom’s content, reached out, and asked if Dom wanted to train with the THP crew for free. Dom said yes. He’s been with John and Isaiah at THP since.
The first two years on the program were almost comically mismanaged on Dom’s side. He never sent John or Isaiah videos of his form. They thought he wasn’t even doing the workouts because his progression looked too fast for the volume they could see. He was doing the workouts. He was just doing them with bad form. The form was so off that the workouts almost shouldn’t have produced results, but because Dom was such a strength beginner, any work was producing gains. By 2022 he started asking for actual coaching and the form work started locking in.
The first 10’ dunk session: Jonathan Clark and Tyler Curry, one dunk in three hours
Dom’s first organized dunk session was at Dunkademics with Jonathan Clark and Tyler Curry. He’d been training two months on THP. The session ran three hours. Dom landed one dunk the entire session: his first Windmill. The next dunks came in clusters over the following weeks. Reverse 360 a couple weeks later. Mailman at Ryan Razuki’s basketball training facility in San Diego (Dom thought it was a wild dunk at the time, less wild now in retrospect).
The pattern with Dom’s trick-dunk progression is unusual. He didn’t build the bag dunk by dunk the way most amateurs do. He had four-plus years of low-rim trick work already done by the time he could dunk on 10’. The 10’ bag was just transferring the muscle memory up. By 2021 he was almost behind-the-back Eastbaying, two months after his first 10’ Windmill.
Dunk Camp 2021: low-rim every day and a brutal 8’ contest loss
Dom’s parents bought him tickets to Dunk Camp 2021 when he was 17. He found out about camp through a Spider Pen Wheezy (Filipino dunker) vlog series on YouTube and through one of Steven Selby’s low-rim YouTube uploads. The first Dunk Camp was where he saw all his heroes in person.
He spent the entire week low-rim dunking (it was still his peak format). He created two or three new low-rim dunks at camp. He tested 41–42” running vertical and roughly 32” standing, which was his first ever official test. The last day was the 8’ contest. The full walkthrough of Dom’s contest is a study in pacing:
- Dunk 1: Threw himself a self-lob, did a Dwight tap into a Cannonball into a two-hand Reverse, punched it first try.
- Dunk 2: Eastbay Scorpion over Mick Rab (5’5”, no push-off). First try.
- Final round, Dunk 1: Double dunk Eastbay (one ball held by a person, second ball Eastbay’d). Missed three times in a row.
- Final round, Dunk 2: Eastbay Honey Dip. He hit it but the previous miss had already taken him out of the lead.
- Result: Lost to Jirren Dunks.
Dom said the loss was traumatizing in the moment but was the single biggest motivator going into 2022.
Dunk Camp 2022: tested 46.5”, hit first behind-the-back, did the pre-show
Dunk Camp 2022 was the year Dom switched modes from low-rim to 10’. He still did low-rim work, but the big leap was on 10’. The dunks he landed at camp that year:
- Honey Dip (his first major Honey Dip in front of pros).
- Scorpion.
- First behind-the-back ever.
- Slingshot variations.
- Multiple Eastbay variants.
He tested 46.5 inches official running vertical that camp with a 35-36” standing, up from 41 the year before. The same week he did the pre-show, throwing down a crab over Steven Selby. The crowd reaction was the first time he felt “pro.”
October 2022: pro debut at the Sacramento Kings halftime
Dom’s first official professional dunk contest was the Sacramento Kings halftime in October 2022. He took second to Newt Williams. The way Dom describes the experience is roughly the way every dunker we’ve interviewed has described their first arena: heart-rate normal during warmup, brain went numb the moment the announcement happened, dunks executed mostly on muscle memory.
That contest, plus the LA session a week or two after, set up the injury chapter.
The back injury (50 Underboth attempts in two hours)
The week after Sacramento, Dom went to LA for a dunk session. He attempted 50 Underboth dunks in roughly two hours. At the time he didn’t know that the Underboth motion (specifically the “both legs under the ball” cradle) is brutal on the low back, especially over high rep counts. He drove two hours home seated in a tight car seat that night. November and December he could barely walk, sit, or sleep.
He never got the injury properly diagnosed (no MRI, no specialist visit). John’s prescription was 15-minute walks and the “Big Three” mobility / core work. Dom ran it for six weeks. Last week of December he was finally functional again, and the first dunk session back was a clean 360 between-the-legs after almost no jumping for a month. Bodies do strange things.
The knee pain (and the 50-degree rainy off-vert session)
The back wasn’t the end of it. In February 2023 Dom went outside on a 50-degree morning, in light rain, in running shoes, in a beanie. He wanted to film an off-vert content piece. He didn’t warm up. He went straight to a full-depth max-effort off-vert jump on the first attempt. He felt his knee go on the way up. He thought his career was over.
He had never had real knee pain before this. The fix was load management plus isometrics, then a slow ramp back to dunking before Dunk Camp 2023. By the time he got to camp he was tolerable but not great.
Dunk Camp 2023: the day-one cool-down disaster
Day one at Dunk Camp 2023, Dom warmed up with the rest of the campers and was jumping really well. Jordan Southerland asked him to hold off and join the pro session later in the day so they could dunk together. Dom said yes. That decision turned into the worst injury moment of his Dunk Camp career.
The mistake was the cool-down. He stopped jumping with the campers, sat on the side for the gap between the camper session and the pro session, and let his body cool. When the pro session started, he jumped back in without re-warming up. His knee pain spiked to a 9/10 on the second jump. He had to scream for John, who walked over and did manual isometric work on Dom’s knee right there, pushing his leg down on a chair and holding pressure, to get him functional again.
Within 20 minutes Dom was back jumping. He hit two dunks and his first behind-the-back of the camp. But the lesson (never cool down between sessions, always re-warm) is one Dom and most of the rest of us at Wisconsin Dunk Camp this week are still applying.
Where Dom is now and where he’s going
Dom is on the active pro dunker circuit. He’s been doing more contests, more halftime shows, and is building his content output as a working professional. The plan he laid out on the episode:
- Health: get back to a fully healthy season after the back/knee year.
- Low rim: return to it more (he’s nostalgic for his 2020-2021 low-rim peak and thinks 2025 is the year he reinvests).
- Bag: consistent behind-the-back, Eastbay variants on 10’, and explore the more creative dunks that built his original following.
- DunkMan League: Shaq’s DunkMan League is happening this summer and Dom is part of the conversation.
The lesson Dom wants younger dunkers to take from his story
The one piece of advice Dom kept circling back to: don’t get discouraged early. Dunking is a small enough sport that most of your peers and most of your friends won’t understand it. Dom got bullied in school for being “the kid who jumps on the door hoop.” He lost friends over it. He posted anyway. Look where it is now. The dunkers who quit because of social pressure are the ones who didn’t love it enough. The ones who love it stick.
The corollary: don’t look at other dunkers as competition while you’re building. Everyone is on a different curve. Dom’s curve was four years of low-rim creativity before a single 10’ dunk. Minnesota Dunk Squad has 16-year-olds and 50-year-olds at the same session. Your own progression matters. Stay on yours.
Where to find Dom
Dom is “Dom Dunks” on Instagram and YouTube. Go subscribe. The low-rim archive on his page is one of the best collections of creative dunks anywhere online. Next episode is the Mason Baker interview on becoming a pro dunker. Comment with any dunker you want Hunter and me to interview next.