The player who won the AT&T Slam Dunk Contest isn’t officially part of the NBA, but that could change if the Sixers are as impressed with their G-League player as the judges were on Saturday. Mac McClung received perfect scores of 50 on all but one of his dunks, beating out Trey Murphy III of the Pelicans in the final. In his last dunk, McClung performed a 360-degree plus, which impressed Dominique Wilkins, one of the judges and a two-time dunk contest winner, who hugged him.
McClung, who broke Allen Iverson’s Virginia scoring record in high school, wore his high school jersey for the dunk. Although he has only played four NBA games, he has spent more time in the G-League, currently playing for the Delaware Blue Hens and previously for the South Bay Lakers, where he was the rookie of the year. He has also had tryouts with the Warriors but has acknowledged that he needs to work on his ball-handling skills to make it to the league. At the 2021 NBA Combine, McClung recorded a 43 1/2 inch vertical leap, and his high school dunks made him a YouTube sensation.
He is the first G-Leaguer to participate in the dunk contest and is having a good season in the G-League, averaging 19.1 points, 4.7 assists, and 2.7 rebounds in 18 games while shooting 50% from beyond the 3-point line. KJ Martin of the Rockets and Jericho Sims of the Knicks were eliminated in the preliminaries, leaving McClung and Murphy III in the final. The judges were Dominique Wilkins, Harold Miner, Lisa Leslie, Karl Malone, and Jamal Crawford, and Julius Erving, the first dunk champion, presented the trophy, which was named after him.
2023 Participants
Kenyon Martin Jr., Houston Rockets
Mac McClung, Philadelphia 76ers
Trey Murphy III, New Orleans Pelicans
Jericho Sims, New York Knicks
2023 Judges
Jamal Crawford, three-time NBA Sixth Man of the Year
Lisa Leslie, eight-time WNBA All-Star
Karl Malone, 14-time NBA All-Star
Harold Miner, two-time Slam Dunk champion
Dominique Wilkins, nine-time NBA All-Star and two-time Slam Dunk champion
