Dust on the ball almost killed my whole session.
I was one week out from Dunk Camp, and I still had to get jumps in. That’s the part nobody really talks about. You don’t get to pick your court when you’re traveling, and you don’t get to skip reps just because the setup isn’t perfect. I was in California for a graduation, shout out to Gavin, and the only court I had was rough. So I made it work.
A Dusty Outdoor Court in California
The setup was not ideal. The net was pretty bad. I started out on a rim around 9’9″, which is low, so at least the height was on my side. But the real problem was the dust. This court was super dusty, and I could barely let the ball bounce. Every bounce coated the ball, and once that dust got on the ball, it was over.
The court itself was slippery too, and that slip came straight from the dust spread all over the surface. So I was fighting two versions of the same problem at once. Slippery underfoot, slippery in my hands.
I actually jumped pretty well that day. My legs were fine. The session didn’t go great for one reason only: I just could not grip the ball.
Why Hand Speed Saved the Session
Here’s the part that surprised me. Even though I was barely Windmilling because of the grip, I was still really close to landing Eastbays on that low rim. That doesn’t usually happen when you can’t hold the ball.
The reason was my hand speed. The grip was gone, but the speed in my hands was still there, and that carried me through dunks I had no business getting that close to. When you can’t squeeze the ball, you have to move it fast enough that you don’t need to squeeze it as long. That’s exactly what was happening.
It taught me something I keep coming back to. Grip and hand speed are two different tools. On a clean court, grip hides everything, so you never really test the speed underneath it. Put dust on the ball and suddenly you find out what your hands can actually do on their own.
Other than the grip issue, it was a decent session. Outside, low rim, bad net, dusty ball, and I still walked away with reps I needed. That’s the whole point of getting jumps in while you travel.
Why Bad Travel Courts Are Worth It
It would have been easy to look at that court and skip the day. The pine cones, the slip, the dust, none of it screamed “perfect dunk session.” But a week out from Dunk Camp, I couldn’t afford to lose the reps.
Bad courts force you to problem solve. You learn what parts of your game hold up when the conditions fall apart, and you learn what falls apart first. For me, grip was the first thing to go, and hand speed was the thing that stayed. I would never have learned that on a clean indoor rim.
If you want more on how I think about these different kinds of jumps, I’ve written about game dunks vs session dunks. And if you’ve ever wondered how I got close to an Eastbay in the first place, the full story is in landing my first Eastbay at 15.
The Midweek Low-Rim Session
The second half of this video was a session I filmed a few days before leaving. The California court was on a Saturday, and this one was on the Wednesday before. It was a miked up midweek session on low rims with Brooke, and it was a lot of fun.
I was completely wiped out for it. I’d been playing basketball every day for like four days in a row, which I hadn’t done in months, so I was destroyed. I didn’t plan to jump for very long. I just wanted to see how it went.
I set goals before I started anyway. I wanted to do a lot of behind the back dunks, a lot of 360 between the legs, hit a Windmill behind the back off two feet, and get some kind of crown variation in. I started on a rim around 7’6″.
It went better than I expected for how tired I was. There was one dunk I’d actually gotten good at for like two weeks, then completely lost again, which is just how this stuff goes sometimes. You get a dunk, you lose a dunk. But even fatigued, this session went decently well.
Working dunks on low rims when you’re tired is its own kind of training. You can’t out-athlete anything. You have to be clean. If you want more on how I structure my jumping and recovery, I’ve broken down my vertical and how I train.
One More Session Before Camp
Two dunk sessions, both went decently well, and I was getting really close to Dunk Camp. I had one more session planned before I left, and then a ton of content coming from Camp in Utah.
The takeaway from this one is simple. The conditions are almost never perfect, and you don’t have to wait for them to be. A dusty court and a dead-tired body still gave me real reps. If you want to see where this whole journey started, check out Dunk Camp 2022, where it all started.
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