Dunkademics was a channel on my phone in Poland long before it was a camera pointed at me. Almost every dunker I learned from, I met through that channel first. I watched the clips at home, alone, for years. This summer at The Dunk Camp in Salt Lake City, Billy Doran of Dunkademics stood on the same court as me with his camera up. That was my first time.
When he asked me how camp was going, I said the plain thing rather than the polished thing.
“It’s my first time at Dunk Camp, and I’m happy to be here. And dunk in front of him. It used to be in my dream.”
Piotr Zawiślak
I said “used to be” because it stopped being a dream about ten seconds earlier. That is a strange feeling. You spend a long time imagining a thing, and then it happens, and it lasts four minutes, and the camera goes off, and you go back to your session. If nobody writes it down, it disappears the same day.
What Billy Said About Me
He had already seen my dunks by the time the camera turned on. Here is how he described me:
“He’s crazy. He’s young in the game and he’s already black band. That’s, it’s insane.”
Billy Doran, Dunkademics
Black band is the top band in the system dunkers use to rank each other. Most people who hold it have been dunking competitively for years. I am eighteen. That is what he meant by young in the game, and hearing him say it out loud, on his own camera, hit differently than reading it in a comment section.
Then he added the part I keep replaying.
“With a little more polish, a little more work on his balance, he’s gonna be way up there with the best of them.”
Billy Doran, Dunkademics
He did not say I am there. He said I am going to be, with more polish and more balance work. Those are two very different sentences, and the second one is more useful to me than the first one would have been.
The Note Was Better Than the Compliment
Dylan Haugen of Dunk Talk asked the question I would not have asked myself. He told Billy that my goal is to be the number one dunker in the world, and asked what I have to do to get there. Billy did not soften it.
“if he gains a few inches of vert… ’cause he’s already got the hand speed, the technique stuff like that.”
Billy Doran, Dunkademics
So the answer is inches. Not creativity, not hands, not technique. He watched me all day and decided that the gap between me and the top of the sport is vertical, and nothing else on the list. He said it again a second later, about the exact dunks I did that afternoon.
“If he was just getting a little bit higher on those dunks he was doing today, he’d be right up there with everybody else”
Billy Doran, Dunkademics
You can put that into a training block. You cannot put “you’re amazing” into a training block. A few inches of vertical is a measurable target with known methods behind it, and now I have it from the person who has filmed more elite dunkers than anyone alive. That is the whole reason this interview matters to me more than the highlights do.
Hyrum Was Standing Right There
Hyrum Fechser, who goes by @hyt_check, was in the interview with us. He had arrived at camp late in the week and missed my Monday session, which is the one where everything went right.
“I wasn’t at Dunk Camp until now, so this was the coolest part for me, seeing all these guys in person.”
Hyrum Fechser
He told me he saw my highlights and that they were nuts, and that he wished he could have watched it live. I understand him completely, because that is exactly how I felt about everyone else in the gym that week. Camp is the one place where the people you watch on a screen become people standing two meters from you.
The Dunkers He Named
Dylan then asked Billy the question everyone wants answered: out of everyone he has ever filmed, who was the most impressive? He said it was hard, and then he answered anyway.
“My favorite of all time is probably T-Dub. Just his balance and his style was so good.”
Billy Doran, Dunkademics
He brought up recent clips from Cam Hazzard next, then described Kao as the freakiest athlete he has ever seen in person, because Kao is 6 foot 10 and still gets that far off the ground. Then Donovan Hawkins:
“Donovan’s a beast. He’s just like a dunking machine. He’s so big, so strong. His hand speed is so good, his technique.”
Billy Doran, Dunkademics
Look at the words he used. Balance. Style. Hand speed. Technique. Only one name on that list got there on raw athleticism alone. That tells me the thing I am already good at is the thing that lasts, and that inches are the last piece rather than the first. Billy told the story his own way in his most impressive dunkers list, and Dylan broke down the full list on Dunk Talk.
What I Am Taking Home
The last thing Billy said to me on camera was the simplest, and it is the part I wrote down that night.
“Stay healthy, stay consistent. Work hard. You can definitely do it. You got it in you.”
Billy Doran, Dunkademics
Two years ago I was dunking on outdoor rims in Poland and nobody knew my name. I wrote about that in my road to the FIBA circuit, and about the whole trip in my full week at Dunk Camp. Next in this series is meeting Jordan Kilganon at camp, which was the other conversation I had been imagining for years.
This whole video exists because Dylan and Dennis Yu taught a session at camp about how athletes show up on Google and in AI tools, then offered to interview anyone who wanted it. They explained the method behind it in the repurposing system taught at camp. Dunker Spotlight covered why that footage is a credential, Athlete Spotlight applied the same idea outside dunking, and BlitzMetrics wrote up coverage from the category authority.
I am going to go get the inches. Then I am going to come back and dunk in front of that camera again, and this time it will not be a dream I am describing in past tense.