Top 12 Highest Vertical Jumps In NBA
There are a lot of discussions about whose vertical jump is the highest in the history of NBA.
Maybe, you already know about some of them, but don’t know all of them, some haven’t been recorded, others are not that popular basketball player like the others.
Inside of this article, we are gonna take a look at all of them, we’ve compiled from variety of sources. Back in few years, we reviewed the highest vertical jumps in NBA 2021
Now we will see in the whole history as far as the sources are accurate. Even though some people might still wonder, some players have never been mentioned as much as others, for example some have really high vertical jump, but they are not popular.
Furthermore in the recent years there are a lot of technologies and methods to know who has done very good records with their vertical jumps among the professional basketball players.
We are gonna take a look at list of the best jumpers in the NBA, because the vertical leap is a sure factor also that the athlete is really skilled, most are recorded from official sources like the NBA draft combine.
Fortunately most of the players for sure have jumped that high, because there are many proofs for that. For example that are players who have claimed to have certain vertical, but they don’t have proof for that like David Thompson, who is believed to have 44 and others back in the days, 50 years ago.
The Highest Vertical Jump IN The History of NBA
1. Wilt Chamberlain has From The Highest Vertical Jumps Of 48 Inches
One of the most legendary players in NBA has from the highest vertical jump & it is 48 inches.
On the image above, you can see how he usually jumps, while playing.
I decided to put Wilt Chamberlain first on the list, because he is one of the most popular players from the old times.
His vertical jump is 48 inches, also he has been good at jumping back in high school, participating in variety of games. They used to jump forward over the bar.
As, you can see his jumping abilities are great, 48 inches is from the highest vertical jump in the NBA history.
RELATED : Click To Take Your Vertical Jump To The Next Level By Increasing It With 9 to 15 Inches In 2 Months.
2. Players With Maximum Vertical Jump Of 46 Inches
We are gonna take a look at 3 players at once, because they all have a vertical of 46 inches. One of them is also an old player & maybe the most popular in my opinion, Michael Jordan
We have a whole article about him and everything, you might want to know about him, but it’s obvious, he has some of the highest verticals.
Back then, he has been from the greatest player in many aspects & it’s normal, that he is taht good at jumping that high & his vertical to be 46 inches. It hasn’t been questioned, because there are many records, while he has played for that.
In old documents, there has been recorded back in 1984 NBA draft for his vertical of 46 inches.
The other player, I wanted to mention is Zach LaVine and his pre draft jumps were from the highest, although he is a lot younger player, he is performing great for his age.
3. Highest Vertical Jump Of 45 Inches
We are gonna mention some players with 45 inches vertical, as Zion Williamson is one of them.
Zion Williamson is with 45 inches vertical jump and above there is a photo of him jumping and making a dunk.
The athletes that jump the highest among the NBA players is common, because most of the good players are skilled.
Despite being with that weight, he is still able to have great vertical ability, so he is good at it.
He is also capable of making a dunk from the free throw line too, meaning he is also able to jump horizontal.
4. Top Vertical Jump Of 44.5 inches
Shannon Brown is the next in the list from the players with good vertical of 45 inches.
He is Los Angeles Lakers guard, his vertical jump skills are great in different situations, while he has played and dunked.
5. Maximal Vertical Jump Of 44 inches
Now we are gonna take a look at three players and their vertical of 44 inches.
- Andrew Wiggins
- Muggsy Bogues
- Ja Morant (We have a whole article about him and his max vertical jump, but now it’s more as far as I remember.
With 44 inches, Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine who we already mentioned have been in Minnesota Timberwolves both of them. The 44 inches vertical has been on pre-draft training, where he was performing a vertec test.
What is more interesting, the player Muggsy Bogues is only 5’3 tall and he has such a great vertical, he has been playing 14 years, during his NBA path with other great players like Larry Johnson and many other old school legends.
6. Maximum Jump: 43.5 inches
When we mentioned players that are not tall, Nate Robinson is exactly one of them too.
He is actually from the few small guys that perform really well with his vertical jump in the NBA history.
With a vertical of 43.5 inches vertical, Nate is the only player so far who have been on three NBA Slam Dunk events. With his 5’9″ height, he is a little bit taller than the previous guy, we mentioned, but we can all agree that this is far from common in NBA, but exceptions still exist in every aspect.
Despite his height, this shows you it is not a factor to be a really tall guy in order to be skilled, he is known for training a lot with weights to be in good shape & to jump higher.
7. Max Vertical Leap Of 43 inches
Of course, there are also a lot of other players at the vertical, we mention, but here we are mentioning certain names that are noticed with something, Vince Carter is with 43 inches vertical & he is well known for his skill to dunk really well.
With his 43 inches vertical, he has also won the NBA Slam Dunk also being on Team USA in the international events.
Carter is also a known dunker for making under the leg dunk more popular.
8. Best Vertical At 42 inches
Again, we are gonna look at three players with a vertical of 42 inches. One of them is Victor Oladipo that we have previously mentioned and talked about. With 42 inches is also Iman Shumpert & McLemore, they all have reached maximum vertical jump while being at the NBA draft combine.
They have reached that to their advantage, because in their career, they have participated in the slam dunk contest & it has helped them a lot.
9. Maximum Vertical Leap: 41 inches
At 41 inches of vertical there are more players, which is obvious, because it’s not that high, gradually, if you are old school fan of NBA, you might know J.R Rider, who has 41 inch in order to win the slam dunk contest back in 1994, also O.J. Mayo is another player with the same vertical.
10. Vertical Jump Of 40 inches
Another really popular basketball player Lebron James, he is believed to have higher than that, but there are records of him jumping high enough
For many years, he is known for one of the best basketball player in the last years and his skills allow him to be on the top for a really long time, he has been better than his opponents as he is a great jumper.
11. Max Vertical: 40.5 inches
We are gonna take a look at four players that have a verticla leap of 40.5 inches, they are Mike Conley, Nick Young, Miles Plumlee and Rudy Gay.
There are a lot of players with 40 inch vertical, in this case all of these four players have it, Rudy and Mike did their in league, while, they were playing for the clubs they were at.
All 4 of them have done the 40.5 inches vertical, while being at the NBA combine testing, achieving this leap with running start.
12. Players With Highest Vertical Jump Of 40 inches
The following players have a vert of 40 inches & some of them are also popular like Derrick Rose for example, Eric Bledsoe & Tracy McGrady.
At this point, you might not be impressed, but still 40 inches is the norm for a lot of players that plat at some level, for some people is very good level to reach, for professional players it’s not something that great, but they have many other skills. Derrick and Tracy are very explosive & have achieved it.
One of them(Derrick) has even mentioned that after going through a knee injury, he was able to jump a lot more and he increase it, as well as his skills are a lot better according to other players.
They are doing great dunks, especially Tracy, we have to keep in mind that genes also play a factor, but with consistency, great results can be done.
13. Vertical Leap At 39.5 inches
You can see that we gradually go to lower aims, I would personally say, getting a vertical at 39.5 inches even 40 is achievable by a lot of players.
Get Your Vertical Jump Up By 9 To 15 Inches
A lot of players fall into these categories, but lets mention some names, that you might know or not know, Tyrus Thomas, Josh Smith & Harrison Barnes.
They are all tall players and this is a proof, you don’t need to be really high in order to have really high vertical, it might help but, there are shorter players with higher one.
Josh has a a height of 6’9″, Harrison 6’8″ and Thomas is at very tall 6’10”, as they are really taller than the normal NBA Player.
I picked these 3, because I want to show you, no matter your height, you can improve your vertical with the right training & exercises, that we have recommended above the link to it.
14. Top Vertical Jump At 39 inches
This might not be even that impressive anymore, but the players that have it are really skilled in other aspects, Gerald Green, Jimmy Butler, John Wall & Bradley Beal are on the list.
For example, Gerald has been for a long time in the community, back in high school, he has been playing since then like most of the players obviously, it’s no surprise.
While John has been announced back in 2014, during the NBA Slam Dunk Contest, at the All Star Weekend events.
15. Maximum Vertical At 38.5 inches
There are many players with max vertical of 38.5 inches, but these are two names, Chase Budinger & DeRozan.
They both stay at 38.5 inches, as they have participated on t he NBA Slam Dunk Contest & they are from the young players.
Of course, there are many other players, some of them more popular other not, there are less known athletes with really high vertical, while other are famous, but don’t have the same vertical, but they compensate with many other skills. Most on the list are officially recorded, it’s believed that for some more popular players it’s more but I couldn’t find proof for that.
There might be, but I am not 100% sure.
Highest Vertical In NBA
So far we talked about some of the great ones and the whole discussion was about it, because it’s something that’s a good measurement for someone’s skills as a player in general.
We went through a really popular topic related to the highest vertical jumps in the NBA from all the time, according to the information we have about it. Not only that, but we do get it that in order for these player to get to that position, they have done many workouts to take their vertical jump to the next level.
This is why, we recommended you a program for that, every player has gone through a segment of workouts, schedules to get better, that’s why it’s important to learn from better players, especially from famous and successful NBA players.
We covered that so far and if, you are still wondering…
Who Has The Highest Vertical In The NBA?
We have already answered above, although according to some people this might not be accurate, but what most of the sources say is this so far, during the history of NBA.
New Players
Inside the article we covered two generation of players, the newer players who are the present like part of them Zach LaVine, Victor Oladipo and a lot of other young talents exist out there. There are also two type of vertical jump test and they are standing and running, here mostly we have talked about standing vertical jumps.
For example Zach is very well known currently for being really great performer on the NBA Slam Dunk Contest, he participated in 2015 and 2016 and he won.
There are many new talents who compete with him and they were near to win instead of him, in 2017 he has been invited, but he refused this time.
As I mentioned previously, we have talked about his journey in another article.
Old School Players
About older players, if you have watched NBA years ago, you might know, that a lot of the records for vertical leap are from older players, but many people are wondering who has the highest vertical jump in the NBA history, Michael Jordan is believed to be one of them, also Darrel Griffith, they are believed to have 48 inches vertical jump.
It’s more than clear that there is a certain correlation between his vertical and his performance, it has certainly helped him to be better from the competition, according to some sources the average NBA vertical Jump is 28 inches, both of them had a lot of advantage.
48 Inches The Highest Vertical In The NBA History
It has been commented that Michael Jordan & Darrel Griffith hold t he record for it. Michael is obviously the more popular one, but if you don’t know anything about Darrel, he has grown in Louisville and went to University of Louisville and the succeeded to get the school to the first national championship in 1980.
After that he was picked by Utah Jazz after the second part in the 1980 draft. He is known for bringing a lot of success in the league and did 20 points per game while his year.
He also have a really long career in Utah Jazz, they both are amazing athletes according to many people and their vertical abilities help them to beat the competition, of course it wasn’t the only thing, but it helped.
There are many discussions related to the best verticals in the history of NBA & according to the variety of sources, they are not exactly the same. You may not know some of the players depending on how old are you and if you are younger, most likely, you will know the younger players, but the old ones are also well known and more likely to be known by most fans and therefore their vertical abilities.
The Best Verticals In NBA History
1. Michael Jordan 48″
2. Darrell Griffith 48″
3. Wilt Chamberlain 47″
4. Spud Webb 46.5″
5. James White 46″
6. Jason Richardson 46″
7. Zach Lavine 46″
8. Shannon Brown 45″
9. David Thompson 44.5″
10. Muggsy Bogues 44″
11. Andrew Wiggins 44″
12. Lebron James 44″
13. Dee Brown 44″
14. Harold Miner 44″
15. Deshawn Stevenson 44″
16. Nate Robinson 43.5″
17. Vince Carter 43″
18. Clyde Drexler 43″
19. Steve Francis 43″
20. Jamario Moon 43″
21. Tracy McGrady 43″
22. Speedy Claxton 42.5″
23. Fred Jones 42″
24. Dominique Wilkins 42″
25. Shawn Kemp 41″
That’s a list above that is popular regarding the vertical jumps.
You may have heard about most of the players, but most people wouldn’t be surprised, when they know that Michael is first on the list, because he is a known dunk monster.
He has inspired many people to start playing and to dunk like him. A lot of people have achieved great results, because he is an inspiration, even though back then there have been less training workouts.
Trying to improve your vertical is great, because it will help you in many other ways to be better. Even, if you increase your vertical by 5 to 10 or even 15, as we have cases with the vertical jump program we previously mentioned, it has been made by a professional dunker, who is not tall at all too, as we have other examples, we mentioned about earlier.
Even though, I am only 5’9, I managed to increase mine with 9 inches with being consistent on the program for all the two months. There are many programs and workouts, which can help you, but this is from the proven ones that work really great for most.
It’s important for a certain program to combine all the needed things, so you can benefit from it on the maximum. From exercises, jumping methods, etc.
All of the things are inside the training program that is made in a ordered way for you to improve your skills as a player, gradually with a few hours per week & you will be able to get your vertical abilities and basketball skills to a great level.
It has been already proven by many people, not only NBA players, but not that popular ones that it has helped them & many reviews are available too. They have gained confidence and believe that they can do better and they actually do by dunking better as well as having better vertical.
By being consistent, you will get results for sure, instead of making excuses, just train more and you will improves your game and learn to jump higher.
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Table of Contents
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The Highest Vertical Jumps In The NBA 2021
3 Exercises To Jump Higher In Basketball
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