Shankar Iyer, known around the community as Shankar the Dunker, is a 6'5" two-foot dunker from Los Angeles and a member of the SoCal Dunkers. He is also the person most dunkers go to before they spend money on shoes, which has made him a reference point for other dunkers deciding what to jump in.
He came to dunking from track rather than basketball. Iyer competed as a triple jumper and high jumper through high school and never played organized basketball, picking the game up through club and pickup instead. His first dunk came at 15, when he was already 6'2", and by his own account that was the end of any other plan. He describes the moment the way most dunkers do, as the point where it stops being a hobby.
Being tall did not make the rest of it easy. He spent years stuck in the low 30s before moving onto structured jump training, which took him from a 31 to 32 inch vertical up to 37, 38, and 39 inches on his best days. He goes up off two feet from a left-right plant. That plateau and the work it took to break it is a large part of why he ended up so deep in the technical side of the sport.
That same instinct produced Above the Rim Reviews, his basketball footwear project, where he breaks shoes down to the cushioning, the plate, the traction and how all of it behaves under a real jump rather than a walk around a store. Dunkers consult him before every purchase. He joined the Dunk Talk podcast for episode 7, an entire episode on what actually makes a shoe good to dunk in.