NBA All-Star: Is There Any Hope Left For Dunk Contest?

Rookies Matas Buzelis of the Chicago Bulls and Stephon Castle of the San Antonio Spurs are set to compete in the dunk contest during NBA All-Star Weekend. ESPN’s Shams Charania was first to report.

Those names don’t jump off the page when you think of who you’d like to see in the contest.

Buzelis has 18 dunks on the season while Castle has 25. Giannis Antetokounmpo leads the NBA in dunks with 140.

To Buzelis’ credit, he has appeared in a dunk contest and shown off some creativity. He may be a sleeper pick who’ll surprise with some cool ideas.

The dunk contest, though, is nothing without hype. From star attractions to perfectly used props to league hype man Kenny Smith, this is a competition at All-Star weekend that needs glitz and glamour to excite the masses.

While there are still two more names to be confirmed for the 2025 edition, it seems extremely unlikely that the likes of Ja Morant or Anthony Edwards will be involved.

Mac McClung was amazing to watch in a vacuum, but the overall quality of those dunk contests didn’t make them stand out as a whole.

We need to start the Matas Buzelis Dunk Contest campaign ASAP @nba @NBAAllStar #nbaallstar pic.twitter.com/KamveGJ6n6

— Ross Pins (@chisportsross) January 17, 2025

What Happened To Star Power?

It’s sad that it’s become an expectation rather than a surprise that stars don’t want to participate in this competition anymore.

Jaylen Brown’s participation in the contest last season was the first time an All-Star was involved since DeAndre Jordan in 2017.

Fans are left only with their imagination to picture what it might be like to see Morant go up against Edwards or Zion Williamson in a dunk contest. Take that in for a second: Morant, Edwards, Williamson, and perhaps Giannis Antetokounmpo all in the dunk contest.

Now that would be entertainment the fans definitely wouldn’t want to miss.

Instead, in a day and age where image is everything, stars have become increasingly protective of their egos and status. There’s more to be lost in potentially embarrassing themselves in a dunk contest than there is in entertaining the fans and at least trying to put on a show.

The last truly great dunk contest was in 2020, when Miami’s Derrick Jones Jr. edged out Orlando’s Aaron Gordon courtesy of some biased judging from Dwyane Wade.

Prevalence Of Professional Dunkers

Another part of the problem for the league has been the rise of professional dunkers.

Guy Dupuy, Jordan Kilganon, and Isaiah Rivera have been among the best professional dunkers in history. The creativity they’ve been able to show and the dunks they’ve been able to execute have already created a standard that is tough to match.

At the All-Star game in 2016, Kilganon performed his patented Scorpion dunk that not only had fans on their feet but the All-Stars looking on in disbelief.

When you add in the fact that so many different dunks have already been done over the course of history, creativity now is as challenging as ever for NBA athletes participating in this competition.

Rookie Stephon Castle has agreed to do the Dunk Contest this season, per @ShamsCharania 🔥👏 pic.twitter.com/1qocA2D7o3

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) January 20, 2025

3-Point Contest Is Main Event

Courtesy the Steph Curry revolution, the three-point contest has now become the main event.

Having superstar names year in and year out certainly helps matters, but the format itself is such that it creates for engrossing entertainment.

Perhaps the dunk contest can even take a page out of the three-point contest in trying to understand how star players are so willing to participate in that. It’s not like anyone really remembers or gets severely trolled for putting up a low score in the three-point contest.

Therein lies an idea as well. We may have reached a point where having the three-point contest as the final event of All-Star Saturday Night may be the best way to go.

If dunking is out, three-pointers certainly aren’t.