Estimate your standing reach from your height and wingspan, compare it against the average for your height, and see exactly what vertical it leaves you needing to touch the rim or dunk.
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Standing reach is the highest point you can touch while standing flat-footed with one arm fully extended overhead. It takes thirty seconds to measure and it removes the single largest source of error in any dunk or vertical jump calculation.
Stand side-on against a wall in bare feet or thin socks, heels flat on the floor. Reach up with your dominant arm, push the shoulder as high as it will go, and mark the wall at your fingertips. Measure from the floor to that mark. Do not rise onto your toes and do not tilt — both quietly inflate the number by an inch or more, which then propagates into every result you calculate afterwards.
If you have to estimate instead, the calculator above does it for you from your height, and refines it if you also supply your wingspan. An estimate is fine for a first pass. It is not fine for deciding whether you are two inches from dunking.
Standing reach averages about 1.33 times a person's height. For a 6'0" player that is 72 × 1.33 = 95.8 inches, or a little under 8 feet. This ratio is what the calculator falls back on when you leave the reach field blank.
The ratio is an average, and averages hide a lot here. Two people of exactly the same height routinely differ by three to five inches of standing reach, driven by arm length, torso proportions and shoulder mobility. That spread is larger than the difference between being able to dunk and not.
Wingspan narrows the estimate considerably, because reach tracks arm length more closely than it tracks height. Supply your wingspan and the calculator adjusts the height-based figure by half the difference between your wingspan and your height — so a 6'0" player with a 6'4" wingspan is credited with roughly two extra inches of reach.
Every dunk calculation starts from the rim and works down to your fingertips. The rim is a fixed 120 inches; the clearance you need above it is fixed by the kind of dunk you want. The only variable that moves is how high you can already touch — and that is standing reach, not height.
This is why a 5'9" player with long arms sometimes dunks while a 6'1" player with short arms cannot. It is also why NBA scouts record standing reach at the Combine and treat listed height as almost decorative. Every inch of reach you gain is an inch off the vertical you need, exactly one for one.
| Height | Est. Standing Reach | Vertical to touch rim | Vertical to dunk |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5'4" (163 cm) | 85.1" (7'1") | 34.9" | 40.9" |
| 5'6" (168 cm) | 87.8" (7'4") | 32.2" | 38.2" |
| 5'8" (173 cm) | 90.4" (7'6") | 29.6" | 35.6" |
| 5'9" (175 cm) | 91.8" (7'8") | 28.2" | 34.2" |
| 5'10" (178 cm) | 93.1" (7'9") | 26.9" | 32.9" |
| 5'11" (180 cm) | 94.4" (7'10") | 25.6" | 31.6" |
| 6'0" (183 cm) | 95.8" (8'0") | 24.2" | 30.2" |
| 6'1" (185 cm) | 97.1" (8'1") | 22.9" | 28.9" |
| 6'2" (188 cm) | 98.4" (8'2") | 21.6" | 27.6" |
| 6'4" (193 cm) | 101.1" (8'5") | 18.9" | 24.9" |
| 6'6" (198 cm) | 103.7" (8'8") | 16.3" | 22.3" |
Reach is the number the whole dunk calculation turns on. These are the ones people ask most — measure your own reach and run it through the calculator above for an exact answer.
About 91.8 inches, or 7 feet 8 inches, which leaves a 5'9" player needing a 28.2-inch vertical to touch the rim and 34.2 inches to dunk one-handed.
Anything above 1.33 times your height is above average; NBA guards typically measure around 1.35 to 1.38 times their height thanks to unusually long arms.
Start from height × 1.33, then add half the difference between your wingspan and your height — so a 6'0" player with a 6'4" wingspan gets 95.8 + 2 = 97.8 inches.
There is no fixed figure — reach and vertical trade off one for one. A 96-inch reach needs a 30-inch vertical to dunk one-handed; a 102-inch reach needs only 24 inches.
NBA Combine measurements are taken both barefoot and in shoes, and shoes typically add one to two inches. For your own calculations it does not matter which you use, as long as you use the same footwear for your standing reach and for any jump touch you measure against it. Mixing the two inflates your apparent vertical by the thickness of the sole.
Wingspan is the distance from fingertip to fingertip with both arms held out horizontally. Standing reach is the height above the floor you can touch with one arm extended overhead. They are related — both are driven largely by arm length — but they measure different things, and only standing reach feeds directly into a dunk calculation.
For adults, barely. Arm length is fixed once you have finished growing, so the only movement comes from shoulder mobility and posture, which might be worth half an inch. For teenagers still growing it changes constantly, which is why a dunk target set at fourteen can look very different at seventeen without any change in vertical jump.
It is the ratio that best fits measured reach data across a wide range of heights, and it lines up with NBA Combine figures where a 6'0" player typically records a standing reach just under 8 feet. Some other calculators use "height plus 18 inches", which produces a noticeably shorter reach — about 90 inches for a 6'0" player — and therefore a higher, less accurate vertical requirement.
Yes. Set the Units field to "Centimetres (cm)" and give your height, standing reach and wingspan in centimetres. An average standing reach for a 183 cm player is about 243 cm.