It’s a mid-October Saturday afternoon and Dan Gross, who is a senior at Greensboro College, is doing what he always does when the weekend comes. He’s back
in the gym at Calvary Day school, where he spent his senior year of high school. For the sixth weekend in a row, he’s here to practice something that he’s been working toward practically his whole life.
Standing at 6-foot-2 with pale, butter colored skin, Dan doesn’t quite fit the stereotype of someone who can jump like him. His muscular physique suggests otherwise. It demonstrates the countless hours he’s spent in the gym working on himself and working toward his dreams of going pro.
After stretching and getting loose for nearly 15 minutes, he’s ready to give it a go. He picks up a basketball and walks about three strides out from the three-point arc. He’s using a top of the line $70 basketball, a white Season Creator ball that he won from his first ever competition in Ohio.
First, he wipes the bottom of each of his neon yellow Nike basketball shoes with his palms to generate a better grip on the dusty wood floor. He then tosses the ball up in the air, practicing the motion he needs to execute what he intends to do properly.
He quickly swings his arms backwards in a full rotation. His arms fly from down below his back, to high and forward over his head, catching the ball that he had lobbed right in front of his face after it had bounced.
He takes a deep breath in, puffs it out, and begins the mesmerizing high flying motion that he’s becoming known for.
Countless people scrolling on Instagram will see a video of one of the spectacular dunks that Dan has completed during this dunk session. He’s spent years of hard work and preparation dedicated toward perfecting this craft.
Now, Dan Gross is now set to be a professional dunker.
Dan had always been around the sport of basketball. It was in his genes. His great-grandfather had played at Yale. His grandfather played at Duke. His dad, Bill Gross, had plans to play under the late great Jim Valvano at NC State.
“My dad inspired me to get into basketball,” says Dan. “He was a two-time McDonald’s All-American and played in college. He just got me started on it at a young age and I’ve been playing since about four years old.”
Dan first began playing competitive basketball at Friendship Elementary whenever he reached the first grade. By third grade, his dreams were set in stone. He was devoted to the game of basketball and had his mind set on going pro.
Dan played AAU ball for the NC Spartans and spent the most part of his high school career at Ledford Senior high school but then transferred to Calvary Day school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for his senior year. Dan was an invited walk-on at Campbell University and played there for two seasons before transferring to Greensboro College.
After a single season playing there in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, Dan decided his time playing competitive basketball had come to a natural end. He would now devote himself to dunking professionally.
In the third grade, Dan began wearing ankle weights to school under his sweatpants. It’s well known that all eight year olds do odd things from time to time, but this antic had purpose behind it for eight year old Dan. He was purposely wearing them to be able to jump higher. He continued this calculated and outlandish trend throughout middle school.
For middle school boys, it is a routine competition to show off how high you can jump. Everyone gathers under the basketball hoop after gym class and tries touching either the net or the backboard. A majority of middle school boys are never able to even touch the net. Touching the backboard was exclusive to only the two or three tallest and most athletic eighth graders.
Dan had spent time researching how to make his vertical jump higher and was the first in his grade to conquer each of these levels. He had touched the backboard in seventh grade and was quickly counting knots up the net from the sacred orange rim.
“I trained for dunking a majority of my childhood honestly,” Dan said. “I got my first dunk whenever I was 15. I was 5-foot-10 and had hit a huge growth spurt that year.”
About a month or two later, Dan had hit his first windmill as a freshman in high school. A year after that, Dan had grown to 6-foot-2 and had hit his first eastbay, which is an acrobatic between the legs dunk.
“One week I thought he could barely dunk,” says Dan’s dad Bill. “Then the next week he nearly had his elbow in the rim. The kid loves to fly and by golly he’s doing a good job at it.”
It wasn’t until his junior year at Ledford High School that Dan dunked in a game. To make the occasion even better, it was a put-back dunk against Ledford’s rival North Davidson. After this first time, dunking would be one of the biggest parts of his game.
Rebounding was already a strength of his, so put-back dunks began to come a lot more often. Making sharp cuts to the basket also became an opportune time for Dan to throw one down for an easy two points.
Once Dan started dunking more comfortably and hitting better dunks on the regular, he began to document his progress.
“I started recording myself dunking and posting it to Instagram at either the end of my junior year or the beginning of my senior year,” said Dan. “I really just did it to see if I could go viral. Everybody was telling me how cool they were and that I needed to post them.
“I really didn’t know that I could make a career out of it at that point. I just kind of figured that out as I went on because loads of people began hitting me up about them.”
Dan has now racked up over 53,000 followers on social media and has had over 900,000 views on a single Instagram post of him doing one of these dunks. Through the use of social media, Dan has been able to display his ability and earn invitations to dunk contests all across the country.
“The first few ones were local ones with not a lot of competition,” Dan says. “At the end of my senior year in 2018, I was invited to the national High School Slam Dunk & 3 Point Championships hosted by American Family insurance in San Antonio, Texas. That was my first big competition and it was a special one to me.”
In the past year, Dan has competed in and won a virtual dunk contest. He has been invited to over 10 dunk competitions all across the country, with some of these competitions offering an average of $2500 in prize money. Dan has already missed too many class days at Greensboro College traveling for dunk competitions and cannot miss anymore this semester.
“I never knew this was an industry,” Bill says. “When I was a player, dunking wasn’t anything special. Now he’s making a profession out of it and it’s incredible. I know he’s having fun doing it and the cool thing about it is that he gets to mingle with some really big hitters.”
In August, Dan’s career took a large leap forward when he traveled to New York to compete in “Dunk League,” the niche sport’s most prestigious competition. This competition brings in the best dunkers from across the world and gives them a shot at winning a total of $50,000 and being crowned the “King of Dunk.”
Dan, who is classified as a rookie in his first time on the show, made a big name for himself there - especially when he threw down a dunk in front of three-time NBA dunk contest champion Nate Robinson that won him $5,000. This series, which was orchestrated by Whistle Sports, is currently airing on their Youtube channel that has over 2 million subscribers.
“It was an incredible experience,” said Dan. “It was filmed across three days. We were in the gym from 9-5 p.m. every day and it was all practically one take.” To pull off a special dunk like he did in front of a former NBA star like Nate Robinson was even more special.
“It didn't feel real,” Dan says. “I used to look up to him. I remember watching the 2008 dunk contest between him & Dwight Howard and going crazy over it. He was giving me a lot of advice and he was telling me he believed in me. It felt surreal after making that crazy dunk at the end with him watching.”
Dan, who is currently wrapping up a degree in business administration, wants to get into merchandising and use his platform to make a career out of his talents.
“My goal right now is to get as many followers as I can,” Dan said. “The bigger the platform you have, the more money is offered for contests. That also helps me in starting a business and promoting it through my social media. Especially after Dunk League, my confidence went way up. It was my first big event and it showed me I could compete with these guys.”
“The boy is committed and I back him 100 percent,” says his dad Bill. “I’m really impressed with how he’s chased this. I'm glad he’s stuck with it and not listened to the nay-sayers. I’ll continue to do nothing but support him.”
When asked how he planned to spend the five grand that he won from Dunk League, Dan laughed, gave a big grin and said, “It went straight into my savings account.”
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