Two years ago I was watching Isaiah Rivera’s dunks on my phone in Poland. This summer he was standing next to me at The Dunk Camp in Salt Lake City, on camera, and someone asked him what he thought of me. This is what he said.
“He’s the future, man. He is the future.”
Isaiah Rivera
I said thank you. That is all I could say in the moment. I have watched the clip back many times since then and I still do not have a better answer than thank you.
People who do not follow dunking may not understand what Isaiah is to me. He is my favorite dunker and my inspiration. Before I ever competed anywhere, before anyone in the dunk world knew my name, he was the standard I was measuring myself against. When I started, he was the person on the screen. This is the second story in my series about the people I met at camp, and it is the one I was most nervous to write.
The Advice I Actually Asked For
I did not want to waste the moment on small talk, so I asked him the real question:
“So Isaiah what’s your advice to, for example, me, like a person who wants to jump higher and to be one of the best dunkers like you?”
Piotr Zawiślak
He thought about it and gave me three things. The first one was the one I expected. Do not stop.
“There’s gonna be bad days, there’s gonna be good days. Especially on the bad days, keep going.”
Isaiah Rivera
He talked about injuries too. He said getting hurt is part of the game, and that those are exactly the times you find a way around it instead of stopping. Then he said one line I have thought about almost every day since: “The obstacle is the way.” I have had bad training weeks in Poland where nothing works and my legs feel like they belong to someone else. That sentence helps.
The second piece of advice surprised me, because it was not about jumping at all.
“The pro dunking game, you gotta get good at social media. You gotta get good at marketing yourself. That’s a skill in and of itself, so master that.”
Isaiah Rivera
On camera you can hear me say “I know,” and I meant it. Two days before that conversation I had been sitting in a classroom at the same camp while Dylan Haugen and Dennis Yu taught all 76 of us the exact same thing. They audited every camper and showed us where we stood online. Then Isaiah, with no idea that session had happened, said it back to me in his own words. He also named the people who have done it.
“all of us, myself, Jake Clark, Jordan Kilganon, 1FootGod, we all mastered the social media game as well.”
Isaiah Rivera
Every dunker on that list is someone I have studied. Hearing that the marketing side was not optional for any of them changed how I think about my own work. Dylan wrote up all three rules in more detail over at Isaiah Rivera’s three rules for young dunkers, and the classroom session that said the same thing first is documented in the repurposing system taught to 76 athletes.
The third rule was the simplest and probably the hardest for me.
“Enjoy the moments, man, ’cause we’re not gonna be able to dunk forever.”
Isaiah Rivera
I am 18. It is easy to feel like there is always more time, always the next contest, always a bigger dunk to chase. He is right that there is not. So I am trying to enjoy the sessions while they are happening, not only when I look back at them a year later.
The 360 Underboth
The part of the video I did not expect was what he noticed about my dunking. He brought up one specific dunk without me mentioning it.
“I missed 360 Underboth a bunch of times. You hit it second try at a session.”
Isaiah Rivera
I did not know he was watching that closely. To me it was just a session. To him it was something he had been fighting for and missing, and I hit it on the second attempt while he was standing there. He kept going.
“I can’t fathom even doing the stuff you’re doing at 18 years old.”
Isaiah Rivera
He said his first 360 Eastbay barely went down, and that his vertical at my age was nowhere near 44 or 45 inches. Then he said it made him feel old, which made everyone laugh, and then he said something more serious about what it means for the sport.
“it also shows me how much the dunk game’s evolving.”
Isaiah Rivera
I like that framing better than any compliment about me personally. What I can do at 18 exists because Isaiah and the generation before him built the standard I grew up copying. If I am ahead of where he was, it is because he showed me the target.
What It Feels Like to Dunk With Your Idol
Dylan asked me directly how it felt to be dunking with someone who was my idol two years ago. My answer on camera was not complicated.
“It was my dream, and I’m happy to be able to achieve this dream, and to make it happened.”
Piotr Zawiślak
Isaiah closed by telling me, “I’m excited to see what you’re doing when you’re our age,” and then he said he was glad I was there. I flew from Poland to Utah not knowing anyone. I left having dunked next to the person who made me want to dunk.
This is also why I keep this website. A moment like that used to only live in my memory and maybe in a story I told my friends. Now it is on video, written down, and findable. Dylan explained why that matters for dunkers at what happens when your idol co-signs you, and the wider version for athletes in any sport is at the endorsement you cannot buy. If you care about the technical reason a public co-sign changes how Google and AI tools understand a person, that is covered in why an expert co-sign is an entity signal.
Next in the Series
If you want the full picture of that week, start with my week at The Dunk Camp, which is the first story in this series. The next one is about the road that got me here, from dunking on outdoor rims in Poland to competing on the international circuit: outdoor rims to the FIBA circuit.
Isaiah gave me three rules. Never stop, master marketing yourself, and enjoy it. I am working on all three. The first one I already knew how to do. The second one I am learning, and this article is part of that. The third one is the one I have to remind myself about, usually right after I miss a dunk twenty times in a row.