Power, skill and imagination. With a perfect cocktail of those three ingredients, Mac McClung, shooting guard for the Osceola Magic, has managed to win the NBA dunk contest for the second consecutive year. Repeating a victory like this is something that only five other players had achieved so far (among them, a certain Michael Jordan). Mac McClung’s feat reaches a different dimension because he doesn’t even play in the NBA, but in the G League, something like the second division, where the affiliates participate. He took the trophy after a dunk with a perfect score (50 out of 50) in which he jumped over former player Shaquille O’Neal.
In the three-point contest, the winner has also repeated: Damian Lillard, in 2023 with the Portland Trail Blazers and now with the Milwaukee Bucks. However, the appearance of Stephen Curry on the scene for a duel with Sabrina Ionescu, the best shooter in the NBA, has made it clear that he, who in 2021 managed to hit 31 triples in a row, continues to be the king of distance shots, although out of competition. For its part, the skills contest was won by a trio from the Indiana Pacers, who were playing at home.
Mac McClung was the big sensation a year ago, when he was a member of the Delaware Blue Coats of the NBA G League and received an invitation to participate. Despite his discreet career as a basketball player, he already shone in high school and stood out in college for his dunks. At 25 years old he has not managed to break through into the elite. He signed a 10-day contract with the Chicago Bulls, trained with the Lakers and the Warriors, but had to resign himself to playing outside the NBA. He surprised with his dunk and became the second white player to win a contest in which the power of African Americans has almost always prevailed.
This year he arrived with the label of favorite and he did not disappoint. Staging is highly valued in dunk contests and McClung has once again stood out in that aspect. His last jump, over O’Neal, to make a back-to-back dunk, gave him the victory in the final against Jaylen Brown. Previously, Mexican Jaime Jáquez, from the Miami Heats, and Jacob Toppin, from the New York Knicks, had been left out.
In the final, two dunks away, McClung finished with 98.8 points, one ahead of Boston Celtics All-Star Jaylen Brown. The winner jumped over two people on his first dunk and over Shaquille O’Neal on the second. Jáquez had already dunked over O’Neal, but while the Mexican did it from the front and with one hand, McClung’s dunk was a two-handed dunk from his back.
For his part, in the three-point contest, Lillard became the eighth player to win the award twice and the first since Jason Kapono in 2007 and 2008 to do so in consecutive years, although he was on the verge of being left out of the final and He got in thanks to a tiebreaker. In the final, Lillard achieved a score of 26 points, ahead of Trae Young and Karl Anthony-Towns, with 24. However, in the aforementioned out-of-competition charity challenge against Sabrina Ionescu, Stephen Curry scored 29 points (for 26 of his opponent), showing that even if he does not participate, the true king of triples is still him.