Dillan McCarthy

Dillan McCarthy is a 19-year-old professional dunker from New York. He is 5'9" with a 7'8" standing reach and a 52" vertical, goes up off two feet from a left-right plant, and his signature is the East Bay elbow.

In eighth grade he split his kneecap in half and spent three months in a full leg cast. When the cast came off and he was finally measured, his vertical was 2 inches. That is not a typo and it is roughly where anyone would be after a quarter of a year immobilised, which is what makes the next part unusual.

The rebuild started at a school desk. He did seated calf raises every day during class, and kept doing them until he had worn through four pairs of shoes. Four years after the 2 inch measurement, the first time he was ever put on a Vertec, he tested 49 inches, and his tested number now sits at 52. He also does something most coaches would advise against, jumping at full effort seven days a week, and has stayed essentially injury free doing it.

Two things from volleyball, which he has played since sixth grade, carry directly into the dunking: reaction time, and a left-foot-last approach so ingrained he never had to think about it. He found the sport in 2016 watching Jordan Kilganon at Dunk League, back when he was a 4'10" kid who could barely finish on a lowered hoop and got picked on for his height. He kept jumping anyway.

Dunkman League 2026. He won Group Stage B on July 28 with 8.90, ahead of Avante Nichols and Jonathan Clark. That win puts him straight through to the World Championship on August 25. The Dunkman League runs four group stages of six at the Overtime Elite Arena in Atlanta. The four group winners advance to the World Championship on August 25 along with the four highest scoring non-winners across all groups, for a field of eight and a $500,000 prize.