NBA All-Star Weekend: Steph vs. Sabrina captivates, and Mac McClung defends his dunk title.
In addition to title defenses, the NBA All-Star skills challenge included an exciting 3-point contest between Steph Curry and Sabrina Ionescu.
The evening was concluded by Mac McClung, an NBA G League player for the Osceola Magic, defending his title in the slam dunk contest. In the championship round, McClung overcame Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics, utilizing Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal as a prop for his game-winning dunk that received unanimous scores of 50 from the judges.
For the second year in a row, Damian Lillard of the Milwaukee Bucks defeated Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks by making his final 3-point attempt.
Ionescu equaled Lillard’s scoring total in her matchup with Curry to win the three-point game. But Curry added three more points to Ionescu’s outstanding performance to win the first NBA vs. WNBA 3-point challenge. — Jim Reineking.
Mac McClung keeps the title of slam dunk contestant
With his second straight slam dunk contest victory, Mac McClung, who has been a slam dunk viral sensation for almost a decade, beginning in high school, made history at NBA All-Star Weekend.
With just four career NBA games played, McClung, a G League player for the Osceola Magic, leaped over 7-foot Shaquille O’Neal, a TNT analyst, to perform a two-handed reverse dunk while donning a jersey from his high school, Gate City in southwest Virginia.
Judges Gary Payton, Fred Jones, Mitch Richmond, Darnell Hillman, and Dominique Wilkins gave McClung a perfect score of 50. McClung then defeated Boston’s Jaylen Brown to win the title.
“I’m trying to sit with it right now and take a second and understand what’s going on,” said McClung. I just know that in 20 years, when I’m older and less agile, I’ll look back and realize how quickly life has flown by at times. However, I am aware of my luck.
Putting Shaq on my high school jersey is so awesome. The fact that he did it makes me feel bad.You better not miss a dunk, he said after putting it on. I said to myself, “Okay, I won’t miss it.”
Jaime Jaquez Jr. of Miami and forward Jacob Toppin of the New York Knicks/Westchester Knicks were both ousted in the first round.
After Brown put on an oversized white glove on his left hand, vaulted over Donovan Mitchell, and dunk with his left, McClung wanted a powerful finish play.
“I think ultimately in this media era, some players are afraid to make it into a meme or anything like that,” Brown said. “Like I wanted to come out and have fun with it, and that’s what I did.”
In their first dunks of the final round, McClung jumped over two people for a one-handed dunk, and Brown did a 360 windmill dunk wearing a No. 5 Brewster jersey, honoring his friend Terrence Clarke who died in car accident in 2021 two months before the NBA draft.
In the opening round, McClung also had a spectacular dunk: he leaped over someone, grabbed the ball off their head, let go of it, caught it, and executed a reverse dunk.
Nearly more than he would earn in the G-League this season, McClung won $105,000. — Zillgitt, Jeff
Jaylen Brown pays tribute to the late Terrence Clarke with a slam.
Jaylen Brown wore Terrence Clarke’s No. 5 high school jersey from Brewster Academy in New Hampshire before to his third dunk of the evening. Brown slammed the ball down and then pointed at Clarke’s back.
Boston native Clarke spent one season as a basketball player at Kentucky, averaging 9.6 points, 2.6 rebounds, and two assists in eight games. Months before the draft, on April 22, in Los Angeles, Clarke tragically passed away in a vehicle accident. He had declared for the 2021 NBA draft. He was nineteen.
Clarke was posthumously selected in the first round in the NBA draft and received honors from the league. — Henderson Cydney.
