Miles “McDeezy” McDonald

Miles “McDeezy” McDonald was sixteen and had just crossed two million YouTube subscribers when he joined Dylan Haugen for episode 12. He taught himself to spin a basketball off Harlem Globetrotters videos, landing the Globetrotter up and through at eight or nine, and did talent shows around his hometown of Rigby, Idaho. At fourteen he decided he would street perform on a family trip to New York City, and practiced three or four hours a day for months until his fingers were black and burned from the ball.

The channel began as a trick shot channel he made with friends after watching Dude Perfect. It stalled. Then at fourteen he got a phone, downloaded YouTube without his mom knowing, and started posting three or four ball spinning videos a day from his bedroom. He still edits everything himself in CapCut, about eight hours a week inside the app, learned entirely by trial and error.

He also goes and gets his own opportunities. When the Globetrotters booked a show near his town he posted a countdown video every day for 57 days, until his audience flooded a Globetrotters video with comments, a player found him and put him courtside. The Tonight Show found a TikTok of him spinning a ball on a toothbrush, and he ignored the email as a scam until his dad explained what the show was. He landed a Utah Jazz shoot by emailing twenty people off the staff list. His advice to dunkers: put an email in your bio, because most of them are leaving real money on the table.

His dunking runs on the same instinct. He first heard of Jordan Kilganon at eight or nine watching Dunk League, rewatched the series something like fifteen times one summer, and low-rimmed constantly before moving up to ten feet. He modeled himself on Chris Staples, then switched from a right-left plant to left-right after watching Isaiah Rivera and Dylan, and inside a month went from barely touching the rim to barely dunking. He trains and films at his dad’s basketball academy in Rigby, which has adjustable rims and is open most nights.

He had watched the Dunkademics camp videos for four years before recognizing the Karl Malone Center in one and realizing camp was three hours from his house. He signed up that December and spent months of Sundays working 8, 9 and 10-foot rims. At camp he touched 10 feet 10 inches, threw the lob that Jordan Southerland double-elbowed cold, and won the 8-foot contest with a Vince Carter 360 windmill, a 360 between the legs with a Dee Brown finish he had never landed before, and a 360 windmill off one foot, covering all three takeoff styles in one contest.

His goals now are unglamorous: get consistent at ten feet, land a 360 reliably, keep working through Kilganon’s Jump Master program with his dad. He is not chasing a 50-inch vertical, only the version of himself that can get up there. His channel has since passed 2.4 million subscribers and 627 million lifetime views, held to one standard he keeps repeating, which is to make every video better than the last. More at mcdeezy.com.