When the dunk contest comes around every year, we get our hopes up. We pray that superstars like Zion and Ja will participate and do superhuman dunks that no one has ever seen before.
Unfortunately, that never happens, and we end up with players you’ve never heard of doing dunks we’ve seen a million times.
Today, I’ll look at the dunk contest participants and predict the winner.
Mac McClung won the last couple of dunk contests, and if he wins this year, he will be the first to win three in a row.
He is athletic, creative, and the favorite to win because of his past performances. I expect him to make it through the first round with ease.
Stephon Castle, the 6 foot 6 inches rookie who plays for the Spurs, has about 25 dunks this year. Most of them are standard two-hand flushes. He is not windmilling or doing anything creative in the games.
I am not confident in his ability to come up with great dunks, and I think he will be the worst contest in the field and get bounced in the first round.
Matas Buzelis is 6 foot 10 and has had a few poster dunks in his short career. He has shown some creativity in past high school dunk contests. He will do a much better job than Castle but fall in the first round to the final participant, Andre Jackson Jr.
Jackson, like Castle, doesn’t have a bunch of creative in games dunks; he mostly has two-hand offensive putbacks. His creativity might be questioned, but he is more athletic than Castle. I’ve seen him almost hit his head on the rim a few times.
I expect him to rise to the occasion and make it to the finals and match up against MacClung.
MacClung is a veteran who has showcased his ability to be creative and excite the crowd.
Jackson lacks experience and hasn’t shown creativity, but he easily gets up in the air.
At the end of the day, I have to go with MacClung; he has won the event twice and is used to having 20,000 eyes on him. Plus, he isn’t a real NBA player like these other guys. He has only played four NBA games since leaving college in 2021.
He has more time to commit to dunk prep than Jackson and the others who are trying to win meaningful games and make it to the playoffs.
