This is episode 11 of the Dunk Talk Podcast. I’m Dylan Haugen, joined by my co-host Hunter Castona. No guest this week. We’re going to do a topic episode on rim height: how to actually measure a basketball rim, why most rims aren’t exactly 10 feet, and what the right ethics are around posting your rim height in your videos. If you take one thing from this episode: an inch and a half is the difference between dunking and not dunking. Treating every rim as 10’ on faith is leaving real information on the table.
The reality: most rims aren’t 10 feet
I didn’t start measuring rims until I was around 15 years old, and I wasn’t consistent about it until right after Dunk Camp 2023. Before that, I’d been dunking at a gym I assumed was 10′ because the rims were indoor and looked the part. Eventually I measured the rim I’d been dunking on the most, and it came in at 9’10.5”. I’m fine with that. 9’10.5” is what most of the dunk community considers a legit dunk rim. But it’s not 10’, and the gap matters.
Other rims surprised me harder. One I assumed was 9’9” or 9’9.5” came back as 9’7”. My high school gym? I’m almost positive those rims are around 10’1”. I jump significantly worse on them. The floor is clean, nothing else explains it. Across maybe 20 rims I’ve actually measured, three or four were exactly 10 feet. Everything else was off.
Hunter ran into the same thing post-Dunk-Camp-2023. He’s never measured an indoor rim that was over 10’. His typical range is 9’10” to 9’11”. His home gym has movable hoops shared with volleyball and pickleball tournaments, so the heights drift every time the rims get moved. He’s started accepting that his “max height” rims will probably keep dropping over time as the cranks get worn down from daily use.
Why an inch matters
The average person sees 9’11” vs 10’1” and reads it as “basically the same.” It is absolutely not the same. If you’re dunking on 10’1” and barely missing, you’re probably making the same dunk on 10’. If you’re dunking on 9’9” consistently, you might not be making those same dunks on 10’. That’s the gap. It’s real. The honest answer to where you’re actually at in your dunk journey requires you to know the rim height.
Stiffness matters too. A 9’10” rim that flexes with the ball is functionally lower than 9’10” on a stiff rim. I dunked in Winona on a 9’10” rim that was so floppy that anything that touched the top of the rim went in. That’s not the same dunk as a stiff 9’10”.
Adrenaline is the other variable. A 9’10.5” session by yourself on a quiet weekday is functionally a different dunk than a 10’ session with the right people in a packed gym. The adrenaline gap closes a meaningful amount of the rim-height gap. That’s part of why I train on 9’10.5” or 9’9” on weekly reps and then know I can convert at 10’ with the people I dunk with.
Why I train on 9’10.5” on purpose
I get comments on TikTok every week telling me to “just dunk on a 10’ rim.” I have access to a real 10’ rim every week. I choose 9’10.5” for most of my rep sessions, and the reason is rep quality. I’m 17, I have a long career runway, and I’d rather be making dunks at 9’10.5” than missing them at 10’. The reps on the lower rim build the technique I’ll need to convert at 10’ once the vertical catches up.
Isaiah Rivera still dunks on 9’9” or 9’10” routinely. He’s the highest-jumping human alive and he’s choosing the lower rim deliberately because the trick dunks come together cleaner that way. People comment on his stuff with “you’re not even dunking on 10’” and he doesn’t care, because he’s training, not posturing.
Hunter also lives on his home gym’s adjustable hoops. Sometimes he’s at 9’9” with Nolan (Nolan Larson, from his episode). Sometimes he’s closer to 10’. He doesn’t care which it is on a given session as long as the caption is honest.
Where rims actually are 10 feet
From the gyms I’ve been in, here’s the rough breakdown:
- College gyms: usually really close to 10’, often exact. Hunter and I have dunked at WMU with Nolan and at UCF with the THP crew (John, Isaiah, Austin, Dom) and both were true 10’.
- High school gyms: wildly variable. Some are exactly 10’. Some are 9’10”. Some, like mine, are 10’1”.
- Private / community gyms: almost always off. Almost never over.
- LA Fitness: notorious for being low. There’s a long-running rumor in the dunk community that some LA Fitness installations end up with the rim before the floor goes in, which would create a low rim by default. We can’t confirm. But the trend is real.
The actual measurement process
The tool is a tape measure, ideally one with a metal hook on the end. The two-person version is the easiest:
- Hook the end of the tape measure on the rim itself.
- Let the tape hang straight down to the floor. Gravity does the work.
- Clamp / lock the tape measure at a midpoint so it doesn’t retract.
- Press the lower end of the tape flat to the floor at the center of the rim, vertical to the rim.
- Read the height.
If you want to be airtight on it, film the measurement from the side AND the front so anyone watching can confirm the tape is plumb. I personally don’t bother filming most of the time because the dunk community at our level isn’t adversarial about it. Jordan Kilganon has a video on his YouTube channel walking through the exact technique step-by-step. If you’re trying to be precise to the 1/20th of an inch the way he does, that’s the reference. For the rest of us, round to the nearest half inch and you’re good.
Dunk Camp also sells a tape measure with the right rim hook if you want to grab the “official” one.
The caption ethics
This is the part that matters. The dunk community does not care what rim you dunk on. Nobody is going to give you grief for dunking on 9’9” if you put 9’9” in your caption. The community cares if you dunk on 9’9” and post it as 10’. The lie is the issue. The rim height isn’t.
The honest version of “legit” is roughly 9’10.5” and up. (Some dunkers draw the line at 9’11”; both are defensible.) Posting 9’10.5” with the height in the caption is more honest than posting 10’ with no caption. Posting 9’9” with the height in the caption is more honest than posting 9’9” as 10’.
One more thing: if you have no rim height in your caption, the default assumption for a lot of dunkers is “probably a little low.” It’s worth including the number even when the number is exactly 10’.
Why measuring is worth it even if you don’t post the height
The training argument for measuring is bigger than the ethics argument. If you don’t know your rim height, you can’t tell whether a great session was your vertical catching up or a 3-inch lower rim. You’ll log a dunk as a milestone when the actual milestone was the rim. Knowing the rim is the only way to get a real read on your progress over time.
I’m one of the most-improved dunkers between Dunk Camp 2023 and 2024 (the full year of training is here) and the biggest reason is that I dunked every weekend on rims that pushed me: sometimes 9’, sometimes 9’6”, sometimes 9’10.5”, sometimes 10’. Each height has its place. I picked the right rim for the dunk I was working on. That only works if you actually know what the rim is.
The takeaway
If you’re a serious dunker and you’ve never measured the rim you dunk on, that’s the thing to fix this week. Get a tape measure, hook it on the rim, take a measurement, write the number down. Round to the half inch. Put it in your caption. The dunk community will respect you more, not less. And your training will get smarter immediately because you’ll know what you’re actually working with.
If you’re a casual reader: most of what looks like a 10’ basketball rim is not 10’. That’s it.
Next episode of the show is with Miles McDeezy, who gained over 2 million YouTube subscribers at 16 doing what looks like the cleanest blueprint for growing a basketball channel from scratch. Comment with any topic you want us to cover next. DunkMan League starts this summer; more on that coming.