Shaquille O’Neal threw down some of the most powerful and memorable dunks in NBA history during his Hall of Fame career, and now he’s getting back into the dunk business. Shaq has created a professional dunk league called, fittingly, Dunkman, which will kick off its first season this summer.
“Since the professional athletes don’t take pride in the dunk contest anymore the best dunkers in world are not [not in the NBA],” Shaq told Sports Illustrated on Monday. “The landscape has changed, as a basketball fan the best dunkers were always some of the best players in the world but not anymore. We want to crown the best dunkers. The goal of the league is to leave no doubt who the greatest dunker in the world is.”
Shaq’s new league, which will consist of 24 dunkers, will have four group stage events, with all of them airing across TNT, TBS, TruTV and HBO Max. The best will advance to the finals where one will be crowned the Dunkman World Champion and will take home the $500,000 grand prize.
“I remember growing up, the All-Star Game was cool but I more wanted to see the dunk contest,” Shaq told SI. “I hate to say it, the last 10-12 years [of the NBA dunk contest] have been s---. If you look at all the viral clips, I think dunking is some of the most viewed clips on YouTube.”
Shaq said the dunkers in the league come from all over the world, with nine different countries and six different continents being represented.
While Shaq is the commissioner of the league, he said fans shouldn’t expect to see him throwing down any dunks.
“Never, never,” he said of the possibility of seeing him dunk again. “I’m sure if I worked out a little bit I could do it, but no. The crazy thing is as great as I was I couldn’t do anything that these kids could do.”
Shaq remembers the first time he dunked a ball
Shaq said his first real dunk didn’t come until “probably the beginning of my senior year in high school” when he was just under seven feet tall.
He had a dunk before that, but his father wasn’t impressed and didn’t consider it be a real one.
“My first dunk was with a tennis ball,” Shaq said. “I ran home and I was like ‘Oh my God, I dunked it!’ My father asked me how I dunked it. I told him with a tennis ball and he told me, ‘That’s not a f------ dunk, punk.’ I had to go back and I went from a tennis ball, to a baseball, to a soccer ball, and finally to a basketball.”
Shaq’s three favorite dunks of his NBA career
Shaq’s dunks quickly became the stuff of legend after he was picked No. 1 by the Orlando Magic in the 1992 NBA draft. One of the most memorable early ones came against the Nets when he brought the basket down to the ground with a two-handed jam.
That didn’t make his cut, however. Instead he went with the legendary alley-oop that Kobe Bryant threw to him in Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference finals:
Next was this poster dunk on Portland’s Kelvin Cato in 1998:
And this one, against Hall of Famer David Robinson, was his No. 1 pick:
Shaq bringing it to David Robinson in 1998.
— Timeless Sports (@timelesssports_) March 9, 2026
Unfair. pic.twitter.com/bpKtUHHSUe
“The Kobe dunk was a good one, the Kelvin Cato dunk was a good one, but probably my David Robinson dunk which I called the “Black Tornado,” Shaq said. “I hit him with a spin move, I just dunked on his head and threw him off my leg and was like “Get off me!”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Shaquille O’Neal Starting Professional Dunk League Called ‘Dunkman,’ With One Big Goal in Mind.
