The NBA Dunk Contest is just as good as ever. What’s changed is the world around it

SAN FRANCISCO — Basketball loves revisionist history. From softening big, heartbreaking losses in hindsight or myth-making a game where someone was sick and rallied to play into an analogous-but-makes-zero-sense-out-of-context, colloquial short-hand (I’m not saying the Flu Game doesn’t deserve it), the sport’s chroniclers have never struggled to rearrange reality just so for the sake of a story.

All sports get cute with the details, but whether it’s because seasons run into offseasons run back into seasons with no time for a breath, let alone hard reset, or the talent and skill on display growing more pronounced every year, the NBA’s reality runs alongside it’s lore-making and legacy evaluation in real-time. This makes for no shortage of events that feel monumental, but it also makes for a very bad collective memory.

This is the best logic there is for the refrain that springs up this time every season. Along with what will fix the All-Star Game, we begin to hear that the Dunk Contest is irrevocably broken. So busted, such a cheap imposter of its once glorious self that it can only be fixed with the participation of a bonafide star.

Well, that fix is a flop. The Dunk Contest has never, in its 20-ish years of delight and groaning defeat, rostered a star. Not really. It’s a place where stars are vaulted into collective fan consciousness and occasionally well beyond, but it’s never been an event that counted on, or really needed, star power for proof of concept, popularity or cultural relevance.

We might as well start with the big guns — consider Michael Jordan. In the contest’s 1987 field, Jordan was the highest draft pick at No. 3. Gerald Wilkins and Jerome Kersey went 23rd and 22nd, respectively, in their own drafts. Everyone else fell between eight to 23. And while we know a person’s draft order isn’t a reliable metric for success, it still remains the most oft-cited criticism of the contemporary contest. What’s more important, and slippery, to pin down is what constitutes a star.

Is LaMelo Ball a star? He led in guard votes leading up to this year’s All-Star Game selection (1,908,967 fan votes — 354,763 more than the second-highest voted guard, Donovan Mitchell) but wasn’t awarded a roster spot due to his name having little to no inclusion in media voting because of the games he’s missed so far season and because the Hornets, as of this writing, have a 13-39 record. Ball’s popularity stretches across demographics and rooting interest, and his appeal for the fans who want him in the All-Star Game likely has to do with his flashy style. He’s not one to curb how freely he shoots or the flair that he moves around the floor with. And yet, Ball’s not in the game. Does that mean he also wouldn’t qualify as a star for the dunk contest, despite his popularity?

So, is a star simply a perennial All-Star? A title gained when someone becomes a household name (which is just, sorry to say, repetition), or when their jersey starts popping up on fans around arenas on the road? Vince Carter was in his sophomore season when he, in a split-second choice, decided to scrap all the dunks he’d practiced and hang from the rim by his elbow instead. A fan favorite in Toronto, Carter’s name had barely made it across the border, let alone become synonymous with dunks when he won the 2000 contest in Oakland. A source with the team said it wasn’t until the next few seasons that Carter’s jerseys started showing up outside of Toronto.

Photo credit should read JOHN G. MABANGLO/AFP via Getty Images

Carter’s win is, for a healthy majority of fans, the de facto Dunk Contest that gets flagged as the event’s high-water mark. It was never so good before, and never as good again. Never mind that besides Jerry Stackhouse (in modern comps, would Stack be a Pascal Siakam, or an Anthony Davis? Starting to see the problem here?), that seminal year held no other bonafide “stars” in its lineup. The point is it’s impossible to take that year, with its enduring cultural references (Shaq’s camcorder, Carter’s mouthing “It’s over”, the through-the-legs slam now emblazoned on the Raptors 30th anniversary jerseys, an event so iconic the franchise just celebrated its anniversary as a themed night), outside of hindsight’s context. It grows more prominent as a comparative standard even as our memory for its specifics slip.

Is an All-Star different from someone considered a “regular star” in the NBA? In their dueling Dunk Contest years, Aaron Gordon and Zach LaVine were probably so compelling because they were equal matches, creating arguably the most compelling contests since Carter’s. Both fell along the same development lines, both were also drafted in 2014. They weren’t necessarily known for dunking, so the quality of interest became a kind of piqued, what’s-this-going-to-look-like curiosity. In the years since, Gordon rejected dunking as persona in order to branch out his skillset and win a title, and LaVine’s had something of a quiet dovetail down from those explosive contest efforts. Both were functional stars before the contest, but with Orlando’s record when Gordon played with the Magic and LaVine playing against the backdrop of the Bull’s (perennial) bad luck, neither was going to go beyond market favorite without, it turns out, dunking from a hoverboard or going through-the-legs and backwards.

Two names batted incessantly around for Dunk Contest contention — with the idea being that the contest would find new legitimacy with their presence — are Ja Morant and Zion Williamson. But there have been points in both of their still-young careers when the Contest would’ve been as redemptive for them as for it. All to say, it might be more helpful to view the relationship of star to contest, and contest to star, as a symbiotic one. Its propellant qualities go both ways.

To this end, let’s go back to Jordan and consider his All-Star continuity. Jordan was named an All-Star every year of his NBA career — including his two separate comebacks. He was absolutely a phenom, but his constancy made his Dunk Contest appearances less anomaly than expectation. By the time he took off from the top of the key and gained the moniker “Air Jordan”, he’d played in two All-Star Games. Knowing what we do about Jordan’s competitive bent, a Dunk Contest appearance (and win) feels more like a further career step than bowing to fan whims or media complaints clamoring for a star.

He elevated the contest, but without the contest, would the standard for air time, athletic prowess, and ability to seemingly reject the grubby hands of gravity be what it is? His 1988 hometown victory against Dominique Wilkins’ perfect two-hand windmill slam was decided by two Chicago judges (Chicago Bears running back Gale Sayers and L.A. Dodgers president Tom Hawkins) and came after Jordan missed his first attempt. And still, it’s the optics of that dunk (and subsequent Air Jordan logo borrowing the same iconography) that sail through time.

Photo courtesy of Jenna Lynn Photography/NBA

“Everybody jumps differently. And I know how I jump. I’m a left-foot-first, two-foot jumper,” says two-time contest winner Mac McClung, explaining the mechanics of a dunk. His body shifts perceptibly, his weight going to his left foot as he mentions it.

We’re standing on a half-court set up by AT&T in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, tucked out of the crowds at NBA Crossover. The hoop on the court can raise and lower, depending on the person attempting a dunk, and cameras positioned around the floor capture fans’ dunks as if they were in the Dunk Contest, complete with crowd effects and a post-dunk celebration of their choosing. Before we get started, McClung grabs a baby blue basketball from a nearby rack. He doesn’t use it — it feels too much like bad pageantry to ask him to demonstrate what he’s explaining — but he palms it back and forth throughout.

“I know which way I spin better, which way I don’t,” he continues, “I know what I do well, so I try to jump from those angles and then create things.”

Asking a two-time defending Dunk Contest champion who is about to try for a threepeat how to dunk is a bit like, if you could, getting a bird to explain how it flies. It’s a question I’m fascinated by, but it’s generally difficult to explain how to jump. What about when to jump?

“It’s a feeling,” McClung says. “That’s one thing that’s more of a feeling than a technicality. You know how far you jump… it’s almost like an instinct I would say.”

If McClung winds up with the highest score in this year’s Dunk Contest, he’ll be the only dunker to ever win it three times.

He almost didn’t enter.

“I wasn’t going to do it three times,” he admits, “but that action would be out of fear and not love.”

“I think everything in life, there’s different actions. I always try to make sure I’m doing something out of love. You can do actions out of fear, out of failure, out of ego, out of jealousy, and I try to act out of love as much as I can,” McClung says, adding that if he had ultimately decided not to be in this year’s contest a little part in the back of his head would always know.

Asked whether he thinks the contest is symbiotic, that it gives back what gets put into it, McClung agrees. He says it’s been the people who’ve seemed the most excited to be there whose dunks have stood out to him through the years. He understands why fans might want a star — he’s seen the debates — and he knows his situation as a two-time title defender is different, but for him, the contest comes down to energy.

“The energy of what you do, anything in your life, determines the outcome,” he says. “For someone who dunks, you just want people who want to be a part of it. This year, everyone is talking like they really want to be a part of it.”

Photo courtesy of Jenna Lynn Photography/NBA

McClung’s been practicing his dunks for eight months and says this has been the most challenging prep he’s had because he’s already done what he considered to be his best dunks. Still, he calls the creativity needed to keep reimagining dunks “the most beautiful part”, and says that love is where the creative mind comes from. In his past two contests he adjusted one dunk each in real-time, acknowledging it comes down to how the crowd and judges are responding.

What about props? In years past he admits he was a dunk purist, in that he didn’t use them, but has different plans this time around, “They’re all props from my…” he cuts himself off. “I’ve always wanted to use these props.”

McClung’s eyes grow a little wider when we talk about Carter tossing all his prepped dunks out the window at the 11th hour in 2000.

“I think Vince had a different flair and swag to him. His aura was there. And Zach (LaVine) and Aaron (Gordon), there were two guys who were so good just going at each other. And that’s like watching a good game that goes down to overtime. You know what I mean? It’s so fun to watch,” McClung says smiling (his favorite ever dunk was Gordon’s dunk under both legs).

Back to the mechanics of it all, McClung echoes what a lot of athletes talk about, that it’s crucial to get into the “flow state”. Even more ephemeral than explaining to a journalist how to jump in a convention hall where Common’s voice seems to be echoing from everywhere, the flow state can’t really be conjured on demand.

McClung says there are equal components of confidence and adrenaline in getting to the flow state, and that once he’s in it time becomes slippery — slowing down and speeding up. His first contest, he remembers, felt like it was done in 30 seconds.

It’s also important not to kid yourself about where you are, that you’re doing all of it in front of tens of thousands of fans. “I mean, it’s a stage. So embracing the stage but having that humbleness and slowing down to really think about your dunk and your technicality,” McClung says.

The best he can explain it is that he knows he’s reached it when he’s no longer thinking whether or not he’s going to make the dunk, but what kind of show he’s putting on.

To that end, and the exposure dunkers open themselves up to, McClung says he doesn’t shy away from the nerves for a bad result.

“The nervousness and the fear to lose is probably bigger than the fear to win, sometimes, for me. And that just makes me prepare more and more,” he says. “Every time I get here I just start preparing, and that puts me in a place where it’s like holy crap,” he says, noting that it’s been people like his friends and parents pointing out that probably no one is working harder than him that really underscores his preparedness.

“One thing I usually do is my hardest dunk first,” McClung notes. “Just because I want to put that pressure on myself, cause I love it.”

It may be hokey — and it isn’t lost on me that we’re chatting on Valentine’s Day — but love as a primary driver is how some of the best things in life get done. Big or small picture.

“I think the energy of what you do, anything in your life, determines the outcome. I try to bring the energy of love into it. Because I love it,” McClung says. “I wanted to walk out on top. For me, this is my best set, and if I make it I’ll feel happy no matter what happens.”

Photo by Jennifer Pottheiser/NBAE via Getty Images

What has changed about the Dunk Contest over the decades since Jordan and Vince is the world around it, and specifically the lens that people watch basketball — or as we’d now say, “consume content” — through.

In its early days, like the All-Star Game, the contest was where fans saw a single move isolated from the context of the game, concentrated into intense levels of skill, pageantry or both, and also the athletes — the dunkers. There was no endless supply of dunk supercuts to auto-play your way through on YouTube or over social media. The contest felt special because it existed on one night, for about an hour.

It’s why most would trace the “last best” Dunk Contest to Toronto 2016: social media was established as a way to watch along with people, but the algorithm-ification of basketball hadn’t yet taken hold.

To be a little sociological, those athletes — Gordon, LaVine, Andre Drummond and Will Barton — were some of the last who’d likely grown up in a pre-social media era. In an event that’s always skewed early-career for its participants, and now pretty much rosters exclusively rookies, the distinction is important.

If a dunk goes as planned it’s an undeniable feat, but when a dunk flops you can actually feel the air going out of an arena. It’s one thing to take on that visibility in real-time, knowing your mistake more or less lives and dies with the night itself. It’s quite another to have it clipped to infinity, living online, an immortal meme memorializing your split-second failure. If the risk on one end is you’ll potentially be mocked forever when a dunk goes wrong, and the reality on the other is if a contest goes too well people will probably say it was dull – well, that’s kind of a cursed spectrum. It’s a wonder people want to compete at all.

The pressure vacuum of the contest is completely different now than in any other era, to the point where an athlete even stating their intention to compete can come with criticism. The Dunk Contest hasn’t made people more opinionated — as the adage goes, everyone has one — but the overlay of our digital reality onto the real thing has made it possible to hear and read all of them.

And beyond what an added psychic ask this is of contest participants to take on, the fact that there’s a digital footprint of every dunk done in recent memory lends to the sense that the Dunk Contest now lacks authenticity and originality. Dunks have always been riffs, variations and finesse on what came before, but when such a brief physical action lives in memory, as something mostly ephemeral, seeing it done live will always be most impactful. When we can pull up almost every past dunk with a couple of key taps, they all start to look the same.

The bummer is that there’s no going back.

It’s like a basketball version of Pandora’s box — we can’t interpret the world any differently than the one we’ve immersed ourselves in. But in that myth, Pandora manages to get the lid back on before hope escapes. And the continued existence of the contest, in its imperfect, persevering form, where athletes like McClung and rookies hoping to be launched into the NBA lexicon are willing to put themselves up to the chorus of public scrutiny just to do something really, really cool? Well, that’s something to hope about.