This is the second episode of the Dunk Talk Podcast, and I’m using it to walk through how I went from getting my first dunk at 5’8” and 13 to landing my first Eastbay at 5’10” and 16. I’m Dylan Haugen, and the Eastbay happened on October 21, 2023, on a rented court at the National Sports Center in Minnesota, off the same session where Hunter Castona hit his first Underboth. Two years from there to signing with Shaq’s DunkMan League as the youngest pro dunker in the world. This episode is the bridge.
Three tip-in dunks, then a knee injury that put me out
Between October and December of 2021, right after my first dunk, I got three more dunks. They were all basically the same dunk. Someone would throw it up to me and I’d tip it in. Nothing crazy. I wasn’t really increasing my vertical much. I was experimenting with lifting a little, jumping a ton on low rims and high rims, and playing a ton of basketball at the same time. All that load led to an overuse injury in my left knee. I don’t remember the exact diagnosis. They told me I fractured something, then later said it might have just been a bone bruise. Either way it was somewhere around my MCL, PCL, and meniscus, and I was out from January to February of 2022.
I came back in February and immediately did something dumb. The first session off crutches I went to the gym and dunked. I caught a self-lob with two hands and hung on the rim. I went from tip-ins to two-handed self-lobs in one rest cycle. That month of forced rest honestly helped me a ton. When I came back I was hitting one-handers and two-handers off self-lobs way more consistently than I had been before the injury.
April 2022: trick dunks on 10′
April is when I started leveling up. I hit a 360 off a self-bounce, maybe an off-the-backboard somewhere in there, started getting off-dribble dunks. Up until that point I was just dunking. Now I was actually doing dunks. That whole stretch was leading into The Dunk Camp in Utah in June, which was my first time meeting most of the pros in person.
Dunk Camp 2022: meeting the pros and realizing I wasn’t the best
Dunk Camp in Utah was the first time I met Jordan Kilganon, Isaiah Rivera, and most of the other pros in person. I was one of the youngest people there. I hit some one-handers and two-handers during the week, nothing crazy. On the last day there was an 8′ Dunk Contest and I took second place to a really good dunker. Lost the final.
The honest takeaway from Dunk Camp 2022 wasn’t the loss. It was that at home in Minnesota, I felt like I was a really good dunker. When you go to Utah and you’re in a gym with everyone who actually does this, you realize pretty quickly: you’re not the best. Not even close. Coming back from that pushed me to actually grind for the next year.
Summer + fall 2022: Olympic lifting, then a sneaky-low-rim tournament
The full summer after Dunk Camp I was playing AAU and lifting. I worked with a personal trainer at a local gym, learned the Olympic lifts properly, and built a real foundation in the weight room. That was extremely beneficial. AAU killed my dunking time for a stretch in July, but I was still dunking a lot on low rims. On 9′ I started unlocking a bunch of new dunks: between-the-legs, behind-the-back, a 360 Windmill. Not Elite trick dunks yet, but the advanced bag.
In November the vertical spurt actually showed up. I credit it to the lifting, the volume of jumping, and just maturing through more puberty. I remember the moment clearly: we were at a fall ball tournament, my first game of the day, warming up. The rims were lower than they should have been (probably 9’9”) which I figured out fast. By the end of warmups I was hitting 360s off-dribble on a low-rim that nobody was measuring. During that actual game I got two in-game dunks. One off-dribble, one off a lob. I had zero in-game dunks before that day.
Two days later I went to the gym and hit my first Windmill on a real rim. That whole week was the first time the work felt like it was paying off in trick dunks.
December 2022 to February 2023: basketball season killed it
After hitting that first Windmill, I wasn’t fully sure what to chase next because there’s a real gap between a Windmill and the next Elite trick dunks. So I tried everything: between-the-legs, 360 Windmill, all of it. Nothing was close.
Then basketball season hit and I basically didn’t dunk for three months. I could still dunk in warmups and sometimes after practice, but I was nowhere near Windmilling. Coaches absolutely destroy you in season with running and cardio. Cardio does not build explosiveness. If your coach thinks that, they’re simply wrong. Long-distance running fries your CNS and kills your vertical. Add a full game load on top of that and there’s no jumping anyone is doing at their best.
By April and May I was back to Windmilling pretty consistently, and at one point I was Windmilling in Crocs, which felt insane at the time.
Dunk Camp 2023: testing 37.5″, winning the 9′ contest with an Inverted Scorpion
Dunk Camp 2023 snuck up on me. I was going in not feeling super confident because of basketball season. Day one we tested verticals. During the basketball season earlier that year I had developed quad tendinopathy in my left knee, and I wasn’t doing anything serious to manage it because I didn’t really know what to do at the time. (I’d manage it much better now with isometric rehab and smarter loading.) I went into the test in real pain and still managed to test 37.5″, which was an inch up from the year before. I touched 11′, which was my goal, but my standing reach had also gone up so the vertical didn’t move the way I wanted it to. I covered the full vertical climb story (37.5″ → 41.5″ in a year) in a later episode.
Day one at camp on 10′ I hit some of my best Windmills to date. I also randomly got really close to a between-the-legs even though I hadn’t been close before, pure Dunk Camp adrenaline. On Thursday they ran the official 9′ Dunk Contest and I won it. First try I hit an inverted Scorpion (basically dunking upside down) to take it. Losing on 8′ the year before and then coming back and winning on 9′ the next year felt like a real before-and-after marker. The field was loaded (Leo, Alex, a bunch of really good dunkers) and I was honestly shocked I won.
Going into that camp I was on a structured jump program. After Dunk Camp I came off the program. AAU and travel ate the rest of my summer.
August 2023: Boston session with Artem
I traveled to Boston in August 2023 and had an outdoor session with a really good dunker named Artem. He’s a cool guy. I hit a Windmill there and got close on a between-the-legs again. The between-the-legs was the dunk I knew I wanted but couldn’t close on.
September 2023: Hunter at NSC, the closest miss
In September, Hunter Castona came down to Minnesota for a couple of days and stayed at my house. We rented out the National Sports Center for a session. It was probably my best session ever at the time. I was super close on the between-the-legs and back-rimmed it three or four times. Hunter back-rimmed an Underboth. Two huge misses but both of us were locked in. The detail that mattered later: he back-rimmed his Underboth that day, and I back-rimmed my Eastbay. Hold onto that.
After September I sort of stopped pushing the between-the-legs that hard. I’d still try it every session, but it didn’t feel possible in the moment. So I prioritized other dunks. Hunter ended up on the same arc with the Underboth around the same time, which we got into in a later episode.
October 21, 2023: the day Hunter hit Underboth and I hit Eastbay
It had been about a month since the NSC session in September. Both of us felt like it was time to do it again. Hunter came back to Minnesota, we rented the NSC, and we had Gideon and Jason come too. October 21, 2023.
Started warming up. I hit a clean 360 Windmill. Literally the next jump after my 360 Windmill, Hunter killed his Underboth. First time he’s ever made it, and it’s probably his best dunk ever. He had back-rimmed it in September. He made it a month later.
After Hunter hit the Underboth, I knew I had to kill the Eastbay. All the adrenaline, all the context. He had back-rimmed and made his, mine was right there. I started attempting. Back-rimmed a few really close ones. Then I went up. Lob was perfect. Transfer was perfect. Punched it. October 21, 2023, 5’10”, 16 years old.
I edited the video the next day. I was so happy after that. The rest of the session was also crazy. I hit my first Dubble Up that day, my first Dubble Up Windmill, my first Reverse Windmill, and a few other new dunks. Everyone in the gym went insane.
Where the Eastbay went from there
Since October 21, I’ve hit probably six or seven Eastbays. I’ve also hit a Dubble Up Eastbay. It’s getting consistent. My next goal is to land one at Dunk Camp this summer, plus a 360 between-the-legs. The dunk milestone after the Eastbay, for me, was the Underboth at 5’11”, which has its own episode.
For anyone tracking the same progression: the gap between first Windmill and first Eastbay is about a year of work, plenty of back-rimmed misses, and at least one trip somewhere to dunk with someone better than you in a gym you don’t train in every day. That last piece, sessions with better dunkers in unfamiliar gyms, is the same thing that ended up driving the way I built Minnesota Dunk Squad.
What’s next on the podcast
Coming up I’ll be sitting down with more dunkers, including the people who showed up in this episode (Hunter especially), and continuing through my own milestone timeline. If you have a dunker you want me to interview, leave a comment on YouTube or a review on Spotify or Apple. Thanks for watching.