This is episode 8 of the Dunk Talk Podcast. I’m Dylan Haugen, joined by my co-host Hunter Castona, and the guest is Donovan Hawkins, a 20-year-old 6’3.5” pro dunker who is in my opinion one of the most underrated dunkers in the world. Donovan jumps out of the gym, punches every dunk he hits, and has done it without ever playing organized basketball in his life. That last detail is the one that throws everyone. He’s a pro dunker who came up through hockey.
Hockey first, basketball never
Donovan played hockey from age 5 to 16. That was his sport. He played basketball the way every other kid did: at parks, in pickup games, in driveway sessions. He was never on a team. He was never in a structured basketball program. The reason it matters is that almost every dunker on this show has an in-game dunking story (first in-game dunk, AAU dunks, high school highlights). Donovan doesn’t. His entire jumping career has been outside the basketball pipeline.
The transition into dunking started with an adjustable hoop his dad bought him. He’d dunk on it at low rim heights for fun. One day he looked up “cool dunks” on YouTube and a Dunkademics video popped up with Tyler Curry as the featured dunker. That video set his entire trajectory. Tyler Curry is still the only dunker Donovan models his technique off of, four-plus years later. (The same Dunkademics channel got me into pro dunking too. Billy is responsible for a lot of dunkers’ origin stories.)
First dunk at 15, first Eastbay at 16, first Underboth at 17
Donovan got his first dunk at 15 years old, sophomore year of high school, in gym class. He’d been trying for a couple of months and was already touching rim consistently when he was younger. The progression from there is wild. At 16 he hit his first Eastbay. At 17 he hit his first Underboth. Every year, a new dunk that most amateur dunkers spend three or four years chasing.
What makes this even more absurd is that he was doing this while still playing hockey, with almost no jump-specific training. The work he was doing was hockey body weight stuff, mostly endurance, mostly skipped because they were “supposed to do it often.” The dunking was the dunking. The hockey was the hockey. They didn’t really overlap.
The 10-month break and the John Evans call
One of the more honest things Donovan said on the episode is that he’s taken multiple breaks from dunking over the last few years. Burnout, life stuff, the normal reasons. The most recent one was a ten-month break that ended in early March 2023.
What ended it was John Evans (from THP) reaching out and saying “hey, where have you been?” Donovan got back into it. He started running the THP program in March 2023 but did not start lifting until November 2023. (That gap is its own story. Donovan acknowledged on the episode that the lifting is the piece he’d under-prioritized for a long time and is now committed to.) His power clean is 205. He’s clear that he could lift more if his lowering technique on the catch was better. He catches the bar standing straight up, which limits how much weight he can rack. That’s a fixable form issue, not a strength issue.
His position on the November 2023 lifting start was that he could see Isaiah Rivera and John’s content taking off, and he realized he needed to actually do the work behind the dunks. Up to that point he’d been jumping on talent and a little bit of low-rim work. Once he committed to the weight room, the floor of his vertical climbed.
Texas Dunk Camp 2023: the first event
Donovan’s first real event was Texas Dunk Camp 2023, where he was in the actual show. He hadn’t dunked for about a month leading up to it. He was scared he was going to underperform. He didn’t. He showed up, the adrenaline at camp did its thing, and he ended up being one of the standout dunkers at the show. That’s the camp pattern that every pro talks about: every dunker is better at camp than they are at home because of the room temperature, the crowd, and the volume of pros watching.
Texas Dunk Camp also led directly to the next opportunity.
December 2023: the Phoenix Suns halftime show vs. Doug Anderson
The first official event Donovan got invited to was the Phoenix Suns halftime show in the first week of December 2023. The setup was a dunk contest between Donovan and Doug Anderson. Three dunks each. Crowd judged. Not a FIBA contest, not an international scoring system, just two dunkers in front of an NBA arena going dunk for dunk.
It’s the kind of moment that crystallizes “pro dunker” for someone who came up through hockey. Eight years before the Phoenix Suns halftime show, Donovan was on an ice rink. Two years after that he’d only gotten his first dunk. A decade-and-change later he’s on the floor of an NBA halftime against Doug Anderson. The arc is fast.
Donovan’s plant + style
Donovan is a right-left plant dunker. He matches plant with Tyler Curry, Connor Barth, Josh Ruble, and Hunter (which is part of why Hunter studies Donovan’s footage so closely). I’m left-right, which is one of the running things on the show. Different plant, different technique. (For the deep-dive on plant direction and footwear interaction, the previous episode with Shankar Iyer on the best shoes for dunking is worth a listen.)
One thing Hunter and I both flagged on Donovan’s footage is his style. He’ll lose a ball and barely save it and finish a one-hander, and his immediate read is “the style on that was crazy.” The compliment he gave Josh in Missouri was the same: “you did the splits more.” That’s the kind of footage-eye Donovan has. He sees the part of the dunk most people miss. His own dunks land that way because he’s thinking about that detail when he does them. (Josh said it best in our last episode: Donovan grabs a Windmill with his right hand, puts it in his left, then Windmills it. That’s style as a discrete decision, not a happy accident.)
Wearing regular shoes (and once Crocs)
One of the funnier things about Donovan is that his shoes are usually not basketball-specific. He runs in regular runners. He’s dunked in Crocs once. (My own answer when asked: I wear Minnesota Dunk Squad sessions in Way of Wade 10s mostly, but I’ve hit dunks in Crocs too. The shoe is a real factor for plant force and bounce, but you can dunk in worse footwear than people pretend.) Chris Bell is another dunker we both follow who runs in runners.
The goal Donovan didn’t have until Hunter named it
One of the best segments of the episode was Donovan being asked about his dunk goals. His honest answer was that he didn’t really have one for a long time. He was just hitting the dunks he could hit and not chasing anything specific. Hunter pushed him to commit to one out loud. Donovan landed on the off-the-backboard 360 Underboth. That’s the goal now. It’s on the list. He said it out loud, which means he has to chase it.
He’s also working on Eastbay consistency. Some dunkers (like Hunter) have it as a regular session dunk. Donovan has it but doesn’t hit it consistently across sessions. It’s the next thing on the list before the off-the-backboard 360 Underboth becomes realistic. The behind-the-back is another one he’s been close to but hasn’t locked in.
The other thing Hunter and I flagged for Donovan’s want list: any of Jordan Kilganon’s off-the-wall variations and the reverse spin Kilganon Lob. Donovan has the hand speed to add those to his bag. He just needs to commit to the volume of attempts. The Kilganon reverse spin is the one Donovan said he’s landed on once (literally landed on the ball), tried twice, and pulled out of. It’s on the list now.
Why we think Donovan is the most underrated dunker in the world
The case is pretty simple. Donovan has a Phoenix Suns halftime show on his resume. He has Dunk Camp show appearances. He has the technique that other elite dunkers (Hunter, Connor Barth, Tyler Curry, Cam Hazzard) reference when describing the right-left plant style. His content does well but doesn’t do as well as it should because he posts a lot of dunks he considers “not crazy enough” that any other dunker would put on their reel.
Donovan’s self-bar is set really high. He hits dunks at sessions that he doesn’t post because the angle, the lighting, or the trajectory didn’t feel right to him. He told us on the episode he can hit a long list of dunks that people don’t know he can hit because he just doesn’t post them. That’s the gap between his actual ceiling and his public profile. The Wisconsin Dunk Camp this summer is going to be the next chance to close that gap. He told us he’s planning to do a session of nothing but new dunks while he’s there.
Where to find Donovan
Donovan is “donovanhawkins_37” on Instagram and on the usual platforms. Go follow him and dig into his older sessions. You’ll find a lot of dunks that didn’t go viral but should have.
Next episode of the show is my own breakdown of how I trained for Dunk Camp this year, followed by the Utah Dunk Camp recap. After that we’ll have more guests rolling out. The future of dunking as a sport is also getting clearer: I’m signed with Shaq’s DunkMan League as the youngest pro dunker in the world, and conversations like this one with Donovan are exactly why the league exists. Comment with any dunker you want to hear from next.