Jordan Southerland, known across the dunk world as the 1FootGod, has built his entire career on one-foot takeoff dunks. He is 6'3" with a 50" vertical, goes up off his left foot, and his signature is the J-Rich behind-the-back. He is 30 and a decade into his professional career.
He was named after Michael Jordan and raised on VHS tapes of the dunk contests and championship runs, which is what made him want to play in the first place. His father could dunk at 5'10" and trained his son's vertical using a rim that rose a little higher every month, and by nine years old Southerland was throwing down on nine feet.
The real one took longer and did not go smoothly. He got his first dunk at thirteen, then twisted his ankle on the very next play and did not dunk again for a full year. High school did not help either. Like several of the sport's greats he never played a minute of high school basketball, having been cut three years in a row, which meant everything he built came from outside the normal pipeline.
The resume he has assembled since reads like a highlight reel. He has appeared at the Sprite Slam Dunk Showdown and the Aaron Gordon Dunk Fest, won first place overseas in Latvia going over a motorcycle, and put together a 2022 summer where he went 22 and 1, the single loss coming by one point. He has spent the whole of it treating one-foot takeoff as a specialty rather than a limitation.
Dunkman League 2026. He was brought into the league days before Group Stage D on August 11, replacing Antonio Eaglan, and went in seeded second. He finished second in the group behind Mac McClung with a score of 9.39, the highest any non-winner posted across all four group stages. That took the top wildcard place. The World Championship is on August 25 at the Overtime Elite Arena in Atlanta, where $500,000 goes to the winner.