Rafal Lipinski, known everywhere as Lipek, is a 6’2” dunker from Poznan, Poland, with a measured 50 inch vertical. He jumps off two feet, and FIBA has described his trademark as a 360 between-the-legs.
He won the FIBA 3x3 World Tour Final dunk contest four years in a row: Miami in 2012, Istanbul in 2013, Tokyo in 2014 and Abu Dhabi in 2015. That run covered every edition of the contest that had been held to that point. The Abu Dhabi title, on October 16, 2015, came against a field that included Jordan Kilganon, and he closed it out by clearing four people, one of whom was standing on a chair, while wearing a White Men Can’t Jump shirt.
The bigger title came two years later. At the FIBA 3x3 World Cup in Nantes on June 21, 2017, he scored two perfect 30s and a 29 to beat Chris Staples by a single point, 89 to 88, with Vadym Piddubchenko third. He added bronze at the 2023 World Cup in Vienna behind Piotr Grabowski and Joel Henry.
His World Tour record runs deeper than the Final wins: gold in Hyderabad in 2018 and at the Beijing Final in 2017, silver in Chengdu in 2017, bronze in Debrecen in 2019, and the Vitesco contest at the Debrecen Masters in 2020. He also took the DKB dunk contest in Fiorenzuola in 2023, beating Isaiah Rivera, Jordan Southerland and Marco Favretto in the final, and won the Lausanne Masters with the 360 between-the-legs.
In December 2014 the FIBA 3x3 All Stars contest in Doha filled its last slot by public vote and Lipek won it, edging Porter Maberry by fewer than two thousand views for a place in an $11,000 field.
His logged catalogue includes a 720, a lob caught under both knees, and a windmill double-up over seven people at the 2017 World Cup. The range is the point: he is one of the few dunkers whose contest tape covers rotation, leg passes and prop dunks at the same level.
He is still inside the sport. When FIBA launched DUNK MANIA at the 2026 World Cup in Warsaw it seated a three-person judging panel and put Lipek on it, describing him in the announcement as a legendary dunker whose presence added credibility to the format. Roughly fourteen years after his first World Tour title, he was scoring the contest instead of entering it.