That plan ended his sophomore year at Lone Star High School, when he slipped on a sweat patch going up for a dunk and tore both hamstrings at once — an injury that knocked him out for a full year and, with it, his shot at a college roster spot.
"It ripped basketball, that identity away from me," Hazzard said. "I knew I couldn't go play college ball."
Around the same time, he hit a growth spurt, cleared six feet, and stumbled onto a niche he'd never considered: dunk contests, separate from basketball entirely. He started posting clips — first as a private hobby, filming himself alone in an empty gym, phone propped on a ball. He estimates he made 300 to 400 posts over several years without earning a cent from any of them.
Now a triple major at Abilene Christian University, Hazzard is $500,000 richer and holds the trophy from the Dunkman World Championship, a league founded by Shaquille O'Neal to fill the void left by a fading NBA Slam Dunk Contest.
The call that changed everything came in January, a week before Hazzard was scheduled for hand surgery after breaking his knuckle in an intramural game.
"This guy named Chuck reached out to me, and he's pretty much Shaq's right-hand man, and was like, 'Hey Cam, Shaq saw your videos and said he wants you to be a part of this league,'" Hazzard recalled. "I was like, 'Wait, hold on — did you say Shaq? Like, Shaquille O'Neal?'"
One viral clip — multiple million views — had put him on Shaq's radar. Months later, Hazzard entered the Dunkman World Championship in Atlanta as a true underdog, introduced on the broadcast as "the dunker you've never heard of until now," going up against dunkers with hundreds of thousands of followers and established reputations.
He won anyway — and did it without a single prop, in a field where competitors brought out cars, ladders, and stacked human pyramids.
"I have always been a little bit of a hater towards props," Hazzard said. "If you need a prop, then you're really not doing dunks. I like to do raw dunks as much as possible — off the dribble, just me and the hoop."
That approach came with a strategy Hazzard says he doesn't think other competitors had caught onto: the contest's Olympic-style scoring rewards stacking multiple elements — a through-the-legs move, a mid-air spin, a two-handed finish — into a single dunk, multiplying the score each time.
The run wasn't without its scares. Hazzard nearly went out in the first round before rallying, ultimately edging out a field that included Mac McClung, one of the most recognizable names in dunk contest history. At the end of the final, Shaq delivered two words Hazzard says he'll never forget: "Well done, kid."
Through it all, Hazzard says the people who mattered most weren't sponsors or cameras — they were his friends back in Abilene.
"They're the ones who, right before I leave for the Dunking World Championship, before I get on the flight, they huddle around me and pray over me," he said. "I knew even if I got dead last, I would still have the same support."
Hazzard graduates from ACU next May and says he has no plans to leave school early, despite the sudden windfall and attention. Dunkman, meanwhile, is expanding into a full year-round league, and Hazzard says he intends to compete in it if asked - ready to lay down the next unprecedented dunk.
Watch Cam Hazzard dunking videos on his YouTube page.