NBA All-Star Saturday Night has lost a bit of luster from what it was at its peak, but the Three-Point Shootout and Dunk Contest can still be really fun when you get the right mix of competitors. The Skills Challenge is what it is, a perfectly fine warmup to the evening — which this year saw Victor Wembanyama and Chris Paul get disqualified after trying to find a loophole in the rules — but it can’t reach the same heights as the other two.
This year’s Three-Point Shootout wasn’t as good as some recent ones, but did feature some late drama as Buddy Hield needed to go 5-for-5 on his moneyball rack to beat Tyler Herro, but missed one to fall a point shy of the Heat All-Star. It was an average Three-Point Shootout, but given the high floor of the event it was still entertaining.
The Dunk Contest, meanwhile, has the highest variance of all the events, and requires at least one great performance to salvage it — while two elite showings makes it an instant classic. For the third straight year, Mac McClung made sure we got at least one great effort as he opened the night with a redux of the legendary Blake Griffin dunk over a car, except took it to a whole other level. McClung didn’t jump over the hood like Griffin, but instead went straight over the middle of the car, taking the ball off the head of someone sticking out of the sunroof and threw down a reverse while leaping over the car.
It was a truly special dunk and one of the best we’ve ever seen, earning 50s across the board while everyone in the Chase Center lost their minds. After a good dunk by Stephon Castle and both Matas Buzelis and Andre Jackson Jr. struggling to get a dunk down, it made sure everyone would go home happy.
From there he threw down another 50 to punch his ticket to the final against Castle — who put down two very solid dunks in the first round to make it to the finals himself.
In the finals, Castle stepped up his game with 49.6 and a 50 as he put on one of the best non-McClung performances we’ve seen in a long time. His first dunk took a few too many attempts to earn a 50, but both it and his second dunk were extremely smooth and powerful, with his 50 coming on a sick behind the back 360 lefty finish.
That forced McClung to be perfect with his two dunks, but as we saw all night aside from one hiccup on the car dunk (that was because his friend didn’t have the ball positioned right), he took care of business with another flawless final round to earn 50s on all four dunks.
McClung’s perfect night earned him a three-peat as he cements his place as one of the (if not the) greatest Dunk Contest performers in history.
