SAN FRANCISCO — Tyler Herro and Mac McClung perfectly represent the divergent paths of the skills competitions they won on Saturday night.
The former is an NBA All-Star, who won a 3-point event that is increasingly contested by the league’s top players. The latter is not even a full-time NBA player, a midair mercenary who won a Slam Dunk Contest that is now entirely propped up by non-All-Stars and lesser-known role players.
It’s the extreme end of a trend that’s played out gradually over the course of the last few decades. In the five years from 1986 to 1990, more All-Stars participated in the NBA’s Slam Dunk Contest than its 3-point shooting cousin. Dunk contest wins by Hall of Famers Michael Jordan (twice) and Dominique Wilkins punctuated the event’s massive cultural heft, while the 3-point contest relied more heavily on role players to fill out its ranks.
In the three decades since, the ratio has shifted, and dramatically so. Twenty-six All-Stars have participated in the 3-point contest in the past five years, with just one—Celtics guard Jaylen Brown in 2024—trying his hand at the dunk contest. For whatever reason, and there are plenty of theories, the NBA’s best players no longer want to participate in the weekend’s signature event. But they are willing to show off their shooting.
Asked this week why NBA stars now prefer the 3-point event, Brown cited the dunk contest participant’s paradox: Fans constantly expect something new, but every year there’s less new ground to cover.
“There’s a lot of players that have done pretty much everything you could possibly do,” he said. “For the fan base the ceiling is high, the bar is high. So it’s going to be tough to get stars to do the dunk contest going forward.”
Perhaps remembering that pressure, he added: “But I tried my best, y’all.”
The trend was on display again Saturday night in San Francisco. Herro, the leading scorer of the Miami Heat, won a 3-point contest that featured four other All-Stars. McClung, who has played five NBA minutes this season, won his third straight dunk contest against three other non-All-Stars.
McClung’s mere participation showcases the changing nature of the dunk contest. While he’s been unable to stick on any actual NBA roster, the 6-foot-2 McClung has gained a social following and name recognition because he’s given this platform every February. His unique talent—and that of others on social media who only post acrobatic dunks—may actually be keeping the sport’s biggest stars from doing the event.
“The internet has ruined the dunk contest,” Golden State Warriors guard Buddy Hield said Saturday before the event. “There’s so many dunkers that dunk professionally, and everybody has seen everything on their phones … You have to be creative, and I think the internet dunkers have ruined it for the NBA All-Stars.”
The event is also ruined for many fans. While viewership numbers from Saturday night aren’t yet out, last year’s skills competition averaged 4.6 million viewers on TNT and TruTV, but peaked at 5.4 million, not during the dunk contest, but during the 3-point showdown between All-Star Steph Curry and the WNBA’s Sabrina Ionsecu.
Would the NBA and its broadcast partners ever flip the events, choosing instead to finish the night with the stars in the 3-point contest? Cleveland Cavaliers All-Star Darius Garland said that while the three-point contest may be “bigger right now,” there’s more excitement watching dunks. “So it should be last, in my opinion,” he said.
Garland participated in Saturday’s 3-point contest, and said NBA stars are more likely to do it because of “the Steph Effect,” a reference to Curry, who became the NBA’s all-time leader in made threes at age 33 and many consider responsible for the entire league’s record reliance on shots from beyond the arc.
“Everybody likes to shoot threes now,” Garland said.
The decline of the slam dunk contest is just one chapter in a long book about how All-Star Games in almost all leagues, plus the skills competitions that accompany them, have fallen out of favor with fans. Ratings for almost everyone’s All-Star Weekend have plummeted over the past decade. (The NHL, which is also on its all-star break, has maybe found a solution to build off—instead of an All-Star Game, the league organized an international tournament featuring teams of NHL stars from four nations.)
As much as fans seem to dislike All-Star Games, however, enough still tune in to make them a viable media product for networks and advertisers. Sponsors also continue to pay up for the exposure and the hospitality benefits. It’s no coincidence that McClung’s headline dunk, in which he jumped over a car, featured a vehicle from league-sponsor Kia.
So while the event no longer features NBA stars, it remains a platform for whoever raises their hand to join. Milwaukee Bucks guard Andre Jackson Jr. is 10th on his team in minutes per game, but he participated this year. He said before the event that more players should consider participating.
“It’s definitely something that’s really good for your brand,” he said. “It brings the kids and fans; [they] gravitate towards you more. Maybe people should start thinking about it more.”
