{"id":604891,"date":"2026-02-15T17:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T17:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/604891\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T17:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T17:50:13","slug":"mac-mcclung-gives-tease-of-dunks-he-wouldve-done-in-slam-dunk-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/604891\/","title":{"rendered":"Mac McClung gives tease of dunks he would’ve done in Slam Dunk Contest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, the NBA All-Star Saturday night festivities took place, bizarrely in the afternoon, with the Slam Dunk contest being the headlining event<\/a> of the day. Miami Heat forward Keshad Johnson ended up winning<\/a> the event, although many fans were wondering why Chicago Bulls<\/a> guard Mac McClung<\/a> was not in the contest.<\/p>\n

McClung has won the last three Slam Dunk Contests, and although he has not been able to carve out a consistent spot on an NBA team for himself, he has been with the Bulls for a couple of weeks now, meaning he had every reason to be out there on Saturday in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Recently, McClung showed off some of the dunks he would have gone with<\/a> had he been selected to defend his title in the event, per Chaz NBA on YouTube.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Clearly, McClung still has every bit of the athleticism needed to win the event, but fans in Los Angeles instead had to settle for a bizarre array of dunks from Johnson, Jace Richardson, Jaxson Hayes, and Carter Bryant throughout the night.<\/p>\n

The dunk contest, and the NBA All-Star weekend as a whole, has received some immense criticism in recent years for a perceived decline in quality, with many fans lamenting the fact that big-name players often decline to take part in the event these days.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown changed that by competing in the contest, but that still didn’t stop more criticism from coming the NBA’s way.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Sunday, the league will desperately be hoping that the players in the All-Star game itself will put forth some kind of effort after years of boring play resembling a game at a middle school recess, as opposed to a showcase of the best basketball players on the planet.<\/p>\n

Tipoff is set for 5:00 pm ET from Los Angeles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the weekend, the NBA All-Star Saturday night festivities took place, bizarrely in the afternoon, with the Slam…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[7,920,919,329,3824,9934,6,19405],"class_list":["post-604891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-bulls","tag-basketball","tag-bulls","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-chicagobulls","tag-mac-mcclung","tag-nba","tag-nba-slam-dunk-contest"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116075916458669573","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}