This is my episode of the Dunk Talk Podcast, episode 64, recorded with Dylan Haugen and Hunter Castona, with my brother and coach Jordan Pimstone next to me. The full conversation is above. This is that story in my own words.
Eight months. That is roughly how long I had been jump training when we recorded this. People at Dunk Camp 2025 kept asking the same question: who is this guy? This episode is the long answer.
The Kid Who Did Not Grow
I grew up playing everything: lacrosse, soccer, baseball, flag football, and basketball on top of all of it. At 10 I was dropping 30 in rec league games. Then puberty just did not show up. I walked into high school at 5’4″, weak, a corner-three-only player, and my freshman season goal was to touch the bottom of the backboard. That was my last year of organized basketball.
The Fortnite Era
At 15 I was gaming ten hours a day. It was the fluffiest, least active stretch of my life. The jumping gene was always there in the background. Our staircase still has stickers marking the max touches Jordan and I set as kids, and we used to dive over pillows competitively. But dunking felt impossible enough that I did not bother dreaming about it.
Bodybuilding and the LA Fitness Zion Years
At 17 a late growth spurt put me around six feet, and I grazed the rim for the first time. Watching Jordan lift got me into the weight room, and I went full bodybuilder for four years: eating in a surplus until I felt sick, 200-plus pounds in the morning, light weights, high reps, mass at any cost. I told Jordan straight up in those years: “I don’t care how high I jump. What’s jumping going to do for me in life? I want my legs to be big.”
After the bulk I started playing pickup at LA Fitness and coming home with stories nobody could verify: posters, hang-on-the-rim finishes, mean things done to people. All unrecorded. I dunked like a big man, two hands down, nothing fancy. No windmill, no concept of trick dunks. I called myself the LA Fitness Zion.
The Two-Year Argument
Jordan was already deep in the dunk world, and he begged me to train. I refused for two years. One day he dragged me to the facility and tested me: 44.5 inches, in 2023, off zero jump training. Just pickup and bodybuilding.
The begging intensified. So did my refusal, and there was a real reason: my knees were destroyed. I would play for hours through pain that felt like my knee was going to literally explode, then be unable to climb stairs for a week. Classic untreated jumper’s knee. The holdout finally ended about eight months before we recorded this episode.
Sprinter First: The Strangest Rehab Plan
Here is the part nobody expects. When I finally let Jordan coach me, my goal was not dunking. I wanted to walk on as a Division I sprinter. So Jordan wrote some strange training cycles: months of pure rehab for my flared patellar tendons first, then sprint volume with timing gates that put me in a real D1 conversation, while he quietly progressed the lifts and jumps he knew were the actual destiny. Speed and jumping travel together, and he was building both the whole time.
My confession from the episode: I did not fully listen. I kept sneaking off to play basketball mid-rehab and set myself back a month at a time, because flared tendons are exactly that fragile. The rehab timeline is the timeline. I learned it the expensive way.
Dunk Camp 2025: A 47.5 and My First Eastbay, Same Day
The plan was for Jordan and me to show up together. His back spasmed four days out, so I arrived alone, knowing nobody. No dunk Instagram, no community contacts. I recognized Isaiah Rivera and Jordan Kilganon from across the gym and that was it. I would have been satisfied with a 45.
I tested 47.5 inches. The same day, I hit my first Eastbay ever while touching over 12 feet. Jordan says on the episode that I might own the highest max touch before a first Eastbay in history, seven-footers possibly excepted. Dylan and Hunter were standing right there for the gym’s reaction.
That week flipped the switch that two years of begging never had. I remember thinking: I really need to lock in on this. This could be something serious.
The Empty Bag Is the Fun Part
Most dunkers build a deep bag on modest bounce. I am the inverse: world-class bounce, nearly empty bag. I had never low-rimmed, never windmilled in the LA Fitness era, never considered a 360. Almost every dunk at my current vertical is sitting there waiting to be repped, which means every session for the next two years can be a new-dunk session, with Jordan coaching me daily.
What Has Happened Since
The episode title says 48 inches. The number has moved. I tested 52.5 inches on camera, filmed by Dunkademics as a new world record max vertical jump, with a 12’5″ max touch. The come-up is happening in public now.
For the outside view of this episode, read the full episode writeup on Dunk Talk. The longer version of my story lives on the About page, and if you want to build something together, go to the Connect page. And keep an eye on the brother-versus-brother race. Jordan’s 45 is under siege from inside the house.