Edited videos show Lebron James's slam dunk by jumping to a monstrous height - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
April 12, 2021
A post accompanying the video of a basketball player’s slam dunk by taking a huge vertical leap is going viral across social media platforms with a claim that the playing has jumped an incredible height of 14.5 feet and it is the ‘highest jump in the history’. Through this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a basketball player taking a 14.5 feet high vertical leap, which is the highest in the history.
Fact: This video was extracted from game three of the 2016 NBA finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors. The video actually shows the slam dunk of Lebron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers after almost stumbling over the floor, by taking a vertical leap, though not as high as shown in the viral video. The magnitude of the jump is not 14.5 feet as claimed. According to website of the Canadian Olympic team,  Wilt Chamberlain owns the highest vertical jump in NBA history, reaching a height of 48 inches, which is 4 ft. Whereas Michael Jordan has reached a maximum running jump of almost 46 inches. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On careful observation of the video, we can see the scoreboard of that particular match at the bottom of the screen. Taking a cue from this, Google search with relevant keywords led us to the actual video footage of that particular match uploaded on the official NBA YouTube channel.
According to this video on NBA, the short video in the post shows an excerpt of game three of the 2016 finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors. The video is of a slam dunk of Lebron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers after almost stumbling over the floor. He takes a vertical leap, though the leap is not as high as shown in the viral video. By juxtaposing the viral video with that of the original video on the NBA channel, we can infer that the viral video is digitally edited so as to show a monster jump.
The video of this particular dunk is shared on the official Twitter handle of the NBA. Even this video shows Lebron James taking a jump but not a 14.5 feet jump as claimed in the post. However, we could not find any official information regarding the magnitude of the height of this jump.
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According to the information provided on the website of Canadian Olympic team, Wilt Chamberlain owns the record for highest vertical jump in NBA history, reaching a height of 48 inches, which is 4 ft. On the other hand, Michael Jordan has reached a maximum running jump of almost 46 inches during his time in college at North Carolina. With all these, we can infer that the video in the post is digitally edited to show a monster jump.
To sum it up, edited videos show slam dunk of Lebron James by jumping to a monstrous height.