Mac McClung Wins Second Consecutive NBA Slam Dunk Contest
Mac McClung stole the show in the 2023 Slam Dunk Contest, and he defended his title in 2024, prevailing over a field including three-time NBA All-Star Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics, Miami Heat rookie Jaime Jaquez Jr., and fellow G-Leaguer Jacob Toppin (brother of Obi Toppin, who won the 2022 Slam Dunk Contest after finishing second to Anfernee Simons in 2021). McClung is the first repeat Slam Dunk Contest winner since Zach LaVine in 2015-16. Other repeat winners include Michael Jordan (1987-88), Jason Richardson (2002-03), and Nate Robinson (2009-10). Robinson is the only three-time champion (he also won in 2006), while Dominique Wilkins (1985, 1990) and Harold Miner (1993, 1995) each won two non-consecutive Slam Dunk titles.
McClung had not played in an NBA regular season game prior to last year's Slam Dunk Contest, and he has still only played in four NBA regular season games (none this season). It has been a long time since the Slam Dunk Contest consistently attracted All-Star players, and those days seemingly are gone forever; the top players either don't want to bother with the event, or else they fear that not winning would somehow hurt their endorsement portfolio. It is sad that the best players don't want to compete in the Slam Dunk Contest, but this is just symptomatic of the larger problems of load management, tanking, and a generally lax attitude toward competition (which has completely infected the All-Star Game itself, turning a once prestigious showcase into a pathetic farce).
I have mixed feelings about the Slam Dunk Contest. On the one hand, as a youngster I idolized the great dunkers and worked hard to try to be able to dunk on a regulation hoop (I failed). Any reasonably competent hooper can make a three point shot, but only a small percentage of humans can dunk on a regulation hoop; fans cannot match Stephen Curry shot for shot, but we can replicate the feeling of making a three pointer in a way that we cannot replicate the feeling of jumping three feet or more into the air and stuffing a basketball through the hoop. Thus, the slam dunk is the province of high level athletes and resides in a territory that most of us cannot visit. On the other hand, the sport's elite players have no interest in competing to see who is the best dunker, thus ceding the air above the rim to great leapers who are marginal professional hoopers.
I respect McClung for developing his hops, and for being a better basketball player than most people on Earth--but he is not an NBA player and I doubt that he would win a Slam Dunk Contest against a field of motivated NBA All-Stars.
So, as fans we can either complain about what the NBA will likely never give us, or we can accept what we get.
McClung is an entertaining dunker, although this year he did not quite reach the heights--literally and figuratively--that he did last year, a fact that he acknowledged during the trophy ceremony when he said that he wished he had given the fans a better show.
All of that being said, McClung beat the competitors in front of him, and that is all he can reasonably be expected to do. McClung clinched the title by jumping over Shaquille O'Neal, grabbing a basketball out of O'Neal's outstretched hands, and doing a two-handed reverse dunk.
Julius Erving--who won the 1976 ABA Slam Dunk Contest and was runner up (at age 34!) to Larry Nance in the 1984 NBA Slam Dunk Contest--presented the Julius "Dr. J" Erving Slam Dunk Contest trophy to McClung:
I will reiterate what I emphasized after last year's Slam Dunk Contest: Erving is the perfect choice for being the namesake for the NBA Slam Dunk Contest trophy, and it is great that the trophy clearly notes that Erving was much more than just an exciting dunker by including depictions of Erving's two NBA All-Star Game MVPs and his three ABA regular season MVPs (1974-76; he shared the 1975 award with George McGinnis), though it is puzzling that the trophy omits Erving's 1981 NBA regular season MVP. If the NBA ever creates a trophy honoring members of the 30,000 Point Club then Erving would be a great choice for that trophy as well, because he was the first "midsize" player to join a club that previously had been the exclusive province of two of the sport's greatest big men: Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Much like Erving paved the way for "midsize" players to win NBA regular season MVPs, he also paved the way for "midsize" players to crack the 30,000 point barrier that had previously eluded Pantheon players, including Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, and Oscar Robertson.
Young fans may scoff at what they consider to be pedestrian dunks in the early Slam Dunk Contests, but it is important to remember that Julius Erving, David Thompson, Larry Nance, Michael Jordan, and Dominique Wilkins were the pioneers: they laid the groundwork for what came next--and they were all at least All-Stars (Nance is the only non-Hall of Famer in that group), meaning that fans were treated to watching the best players competing against each other head to head.
Labels: Jacob Toppin, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Jaylen Brown, Julius Erving, Mac McClung, Slam Dunk Contest
posted by David Friedman @ 12:43 AM
6 Comments:
A bit off topic, but I'm really proud of how Sabrina Ionescu held her own in the three-point contest against Steph Curry. It could have devolved into a corny circus sideshow and it was not that at all. She only lost by three points to the greatest three-point shooter ever! (26-29). Given the biological realities of male and female, her decision to use the WNBA ball as opposed to Steph's NBA ball makes perfect sense and made for a totally fair competition. Props to her for doing it at the NBA three-point line!
That said, here speaking as a man, I was ashamed of Kenny Smith's comments about how she should have shot from the WNBA three-point line. I mean, he said that after the woman had just lost to the three-point GOAT by only three points! Moreover, her score of 26 had outscored or matched the other men in the actual three-point contest. But all Mr. Smith could do was compare the women's tee to the men's tee in golf to suggest that Ms. Ionescu should know her place. Mr. Smith thus spouted off blatant male chauvinism and his stupid commentary took a bit of the shine off an otherwise really cool event. I'm too young to remember the Bobby Riggs/Billie Jean King tennis match back in 1973 but I did see and enjoyed the movie where Steve Carrell plays Riggs and the Curry/Ionesco matchup was so much cooler because you could tell that Curry and Ionescu have the utmost respect for each other. The fact that Curry took on the challenge and took it seriously says a lot about him as a man and about his respect for the female species. I got the sense that he was putting Ionescu in a position to be a role model for his own daughters, which she did. But I say again shame on Smith!
First anonymous, I didn't hear/read what Smith did, but I don't see the problem with what he said from what you're saying he said here. There's an obvious reason why the women's 3-point line is shorter and the ball they use is smaller. There's nothing wrong with either of these things. If Ionescu played in the NBA, she'd shoot less than 10% from 3 if she ever saw the court(which obviously she's nowhere good enough to play in the NBA) and probably could barely ever get a shot off if she saw the court.
The Battle of the Sexes was a good movie, though Hollywood is always biased and doesn't necessarily paint an accurate picture usually.. Before that match, Riggs destroyed the women's #1 player at the time, Margaret Court. Then, a few months later, he played a contested match and lost vs the new women's #1 BJK. BJK's win was great for women's tennis. But, Riggs was almost literally twice her age. There's nothing wrong with realizing this and pointing this out, especially since so many people don't understand this. And if someone does like Smith, this doesn't make him a chauvinist.
It looks like Sabrina is engaged to be married. Let's hope she chooses wisely between a life raising children in a big loving family, and laboring to make a poor imitation of a man to earn the encomiums of panty-sniffing weirdos on the internet.
First Anonymous here:
Of course the WNBA ball is smaller and their three-point line is closer than the NBA's is. As I suggested in my first comment, the biological reality is that men much stronger and faster than women are. We're never gonna see any women compete in the dunk contest, for example.
And so, regarding the Curry/Ionescu contest, it seemed like a fair compromise for Ionescu to use the WNBA basketball as opposed to Curry's NBA ball.
Nevertheless, she deserves a shout out for insisting to use the NBA three-point line instead of opting for the WNBA line. I thought that it was gutsy of her to shoot from as far away as the boys.
Now, I probably overstated my case when I called out Kenny Smith as "male chauvinist." But his comments came across like he was naysaying her in a way to put her in her place. To me at least, it came across like he was criticizing her for taking the more difficult challenge, shooting from NBA line instead of WNBA line. Despite the fact that she held her own at the NBA distance!
Maybe my fundamental disagreement with Kenny Smith was that I thought that her using the WNBA ball was a fair compromise whereas he seemed to think in All or Nothing terms: she must either use the WNBA ball and the WNBA line, or she must use the NBA ball and NBA line. Call him a "purist" maybe. I guess to me Smith seems obtuse here and, yeah, it seems to me like he's being obtuse because of chauvinism.
I just don't see how her using the smaller ball due to the realities of the female smaller hand and smaller physicality takes away from the validity of her contest with Curry. Also, that's the size ball she's been using her entire (official) basketball life.
Again, I probably shouldn't have called Smith a "male chauvinist." But to me the tone of his comments came across like he was condescending to the female of the species.
First anonymous, it seems like you and many others just get worked up over basically nothing. And jump the gun all too quickly and go extreme when anyone like Smith might dare to have an opinion that might across as critical. Again, I didn't hear/read what he said, but it doesn't seem like he said anything controversial. He just had his own opinion on the matter. And it makes sense. Either follow the same rules as Curry and or just stick to your own rules completely. I see his point, and it seems to have nothing to do with being remotely a chauvinist. If Curry was facing a HS male in a similar contest, I'd suspect Smith would say the same thing about the HS male using the HS 3-point line.
Smith explained today that he was not criticizing Ionescu but just making (or attempting to make) the point that it would have been fairer if both players shot under their normal conditions using their respective familiar ball and distance. I agree with someone who suggested that there is a difference between being a studio commentator looking at the big picture and being a color commentator at a live event; in the latter role, the commentator should be bringing fans into the moment and not nitpicking a format under which both players agreed to compete. Curry and Ionescu took the event seriously but also joyfully, and the live commentary should have matched their spirit.
I was more bothered by Smith's inability or unwillingness to correctly pronounce the name of Slam Dunk Contest judge Darnell Hillman, a wonderful person who also was a key contributor to Pacers' championship teams in the ABA. Regardless of what one thinks of Hillman's Dunk Contest voting, it was disrespectful (and not funny) to keep mispronouncing his name.
I just think that Smith had a subpar night overall, but he was not nearly as bad as the All-Star players were during Sunday's game.
Post a Comment
<< Home