This is episode 25 of the Dunk Talk Podcast. I’m Dylan Haugen, joined by my co-host Hunter Castona, and Donovan Hawkins back for round three (his third episode in five weeks). The topic on this one is the harder question: what does it actually take for dunking to become a real sport? Olympic-eligible, judged objectively, women’s division, the whole list. Donovan, Hunter, and I take it from the Paris Olympics breakdancing precedent through what a real scoring system would look like to what we’d need to see happen with women’s dunking for a 10-foot contest to even be competitive.
The Olympic case (and what breakdancing taught us)
The Paris 2024 Olympics added breakdancing as a sport. The thing breakdancing figured out (and the thing dunking hasn’t yet) was an objective scoring system. The judges had specific categories (technique, vocabulary, originality, execution, musicality) and a way to score against each. The reason breakdancing got into the Olympics, and dunking didn’t, is that breakdancing showed it could be scored.
Dunking should be Olympic-eligible. The training intensity is on par with most Olympic sports. The visible skill is more dramatic than most. The talent pool is global. The thing it’s missing is the same thing breakdancing eventually solved: a reproducible scoring rubric a non-dunker can apply.
The realistic earliest target for dunking in the Olympics is Los Angeles 2028, which is also coincidentally where the dunk show economy is densest. Four years isn’t enough to build a women’s division from zero, but it’s probably enough to lock in a men’s scoring system if the WDA, FIBA, and the dunk community align on it.
The women’s dunking question
The women’s division is the harder of the two structural questions. Today there are maybe five to ten girls in the world who can dunk on 10’ consistently. That’s not a contest field. A 10’ women’s dunking Olympic event today would just be a two-hander contest where the question is who has the cleanest cuff.
Two paths get women’s dunking to a real contest:
- Lower the rim. High jump has different bar heights for men and women. Track has different distances. Dunking lowering the women’s rim to 9’6” or 9’8” would make the existing female dunker pool immediately competitive at a trick-dunk level. Hunter and Donovan both lean toward this as the right answer in the short term.
- Grow the pool young. Train girls from age 10-11 the way we train boys. Nobody has ever done this. Brooke (my girlfriend, posts as “One Foot Gal” on Instagram, has been low-rim dunking consistently for about six months) is a case study for what happens when a girl with no jumping background starts seriously. She’s already landed between-the-legs, behind-the-back, and 360 Windmills on low rim. She did dance her whole life, not track or basketball, so she had basically zero jumping predisposition. The progress curve is real.
The math on female vertical ceilings
Donovan and his dad did a back-of-envelope calculation a few months ago. The women’s 100m world record is 10.49 seconds. Usain Bolt’s is 9.58. If you take that ratio and apply it to Isaiah Rivera’s tested 50.5” running vertical, the comparable women’s ceiling sits around 46 inches. (Donovan re-ran the math live on the episode and got 46 specifically.)
46 inches for a tall female athlete is enough to hit Eastbays at 10’ with proper hand speed. The reason we haven’t seen it is that no female athlete with that genetic ceiling has ever specifically trained for dunking. Volleyball players have hit 38-inch verticals on Vertec tests (we’ve confirmed at least one). High jumpers have cleared 6’7” bars consistently. Neither population has redirected toward dunking yet because dunking isn’t a sport.
Closing the loop: if dunking becomes a real sport with a real Olympic event, the volleyball and high jump talent pool starts crossing over, and the women’s vertical ceiling resolves itself within five to ten years.
The scoring system problem
The bigger structural issue is the scoring system. Right now, dunk contests are scored 1-10 by judges with no formal training. The practical scoring range used is roughly 5-10, which compresses the actual signal into half the available range. The result is that the difference between a Windmill (which a 12-year-old can hit) and an Underboth (which roughly five dunkers in the world can hit consistently) ends up looking like an 8 versus a 9.
The recent XBA contest in China was a case study in the problem. Jordan Kilganon, Isaiah Rivera, Jonathan Clark, Dan Gross, Chen (Donovan’s favorite), and a few others were in the field. The judging was inconsistent. First-round scores were already in the 47s out of 50, which guaranteed the back-half scoring was meaningless. Donovan thinks Kilganon should have won. The actual result was different. The bigger point: the result didn’t matter as much as the fact that nobody watching trusted the scoring.
The fixes the three of us proposed on the episode:
- Use the whole 1-10 scale. A one-hander dunk should be a 1. A Windmill should be a 3 or 4. Underboth should be a 9 or 10. The compressed range is the single biggest scoring problem in the sport.
- Judges should be active or retired pros, not random fans. The dunk community already has 50+ people qualified to judge. Use them.
- WDA-style dunk-tier system as the foundation. The white / light blue / light green / green / blue / purple / black band system gives a rough difficulty scale. Build the contest scoring on top of that tier baseline.
- Coach the judges before the contest. Even fan judges can give good scores if someone walks them through the difficulty math beforehand. Five-minute briefing is enough.
Donovan’s framing on this is the right one: the FIBA 3×3 Edmonton contest gave Finn Addy a 6 out of 10 on what was actually a clean dunk. The 6 wasn’t the worst score in the contest. It was the most defensible. The problem was every other score was inflated, which made the 6 look like a punishment instead of an honest read. The scale just needs to come down across the board.
Push-offs and what counts as a clean dunk
The other structural debate inside dunking right now is push-offs. The XBA contest in China was famously push-off-heavy. So is most of professional dunking generally. A Dubble Up over a stacked person with a clear push from the bottom person’s shoulders is fundamentally a different dunk from a Dubble Up over a person who stands still.
Donovan’s current take (and mine, and Hunter’s) is that no-prop dunks should be the gold standard for Olympic-eligibility. The actual contest rule should probably be: any prop or human is allowed, but a dunk hit without props or push-offs scores higher than the same dunk hit with them. The community knows the difference. The scoring should reflect it.
The same logic applies to off-the-backboard, off-the-wall, and self-bounce variants. They’re valid dunks. They’re also easier than the no-prop equivalent. Scoring should distinguish.
The NDL / dunk-league infrastructure
The other thing we’d need for Olympic-eligibility is a real domestic league structure. Right now the only thing close is what Mason Baker and the Utah Dunkers are building with the NDL: inter-club dunk contests, scoring on a shared rubric, points-based season standings. The NDL is dormant right now because dunk groups don’t have enough roster depth to handle injuries. As the dunk groups grow, NDL becomes the natural infrastructure for a national circuit.
The other path is Shaq’s DunkMan League, which is a pro-only league. DunkMan League is the closest thing to an organized pro circuit right now. The two leagues serve different tiers (NDL is amateur/club, DunkMan is pro) and could coexist as the feeder system into the Olympics if dunking gets there.
Show dunks vs. contest dunks
The other dimension of dunking as a sport is whether show dunkers count as pro athletes. JaySmoove’s episode last week got into this from the show-dunker side. Flight Squad, Globetrotters, and dunk-team programs are real jobs but they’re entertainment, not contests. A real Olympic dunking division would have to draw the line clearly between show dunking (entertainment, no scoring) and contest dunking (athletic competition, scored objectively).
The honest answer is that the same dunker can do both, the way that NBA players can also do show events. The Olympic eligibility question only applies to the contest-dunking format. Show dunks remain their own thing.
What the realistic path forward looks like
The three of us roughly agreed on a five-step path to dunking as a real sport:
- Adopt a 1-10 scoring system with WDA-tier baselines. Implement at FIBA 3×3 and DunkMan League first. Other contests follow.
- Train a judge pool from the pro and retired-pro community. 15-20 qualified judges per region.
- Grow NDL as the club-tier league. Goal: 20+ active clubs by 2027.
- Launch a women’s contest format with a lowered rim. 9’6” or 9’8”. Grow the talent pool from the existing volleyball / track / dance crossover.
- Pitch the IOC. Realistic earliest Olympic appearance is LA 2028. Brisbane 2032 is more realistic.
The pieces exist. The infrastructure is forming. The thing missing is a coordination layer to actually push all five of these forward in parallel.
Where to find us and what’s next
Donovan is “donovanhawkins_37” on Instagram. Hunter is “huntercastona”. Brooke is “onefootgal” if you want to follow a girl actively building a dunking bag from zero. Minnesota Dunk Squad sessions are weekly through fall.
Next episode is Jordan Southerland (1FootGod). After that, the Cam Hazzard interview. Comment with any dunker you want me and Hunter to interview next.