This is episode 68 of the Dunk Talk Podcast: the annual NBA dunk contest autopsy, now a tradition after last year’s edition with Donovan. I’m Dylan Haugen, 18 now, joined by Travis Reynolds (who introduced himself as a 43-year-old professional dunker, which we’re leaving in). The 2026 contest had no stars, no Mac McClung, fresh judging crimes, and one genuinely beautiful dunk, and then Mac dropped four dunks on Instagram that were better than the entire event. We watched all of it on camera; here’s the written record. (This one’s best on YouTube, where you can see what we’re reacting to, and where the mid-react ads tormented us. Someone donate us Premium.)
The field, with our scores next to theirs
- Carter Bryant opened with the most aesthetic 360 of the night, huge space, slightly long, finish caught on the rim, and got a stingy 45.6 from judges who then spent the rest of the contest handing out 47s. I had Carter winning beforehand off his warmup clips, and his later Eastbay, started from practically the center circle, was punched with real authority, though scored bafflingly above the night’s best dunk.
- Jace Richardson (son of J-Rich, the man the J Rich dunk is named after, which is great lineage content) hit a reverse Windmill, slightly under the basket, modest extension, on his second attempt, and got a 48-49. Our ruling: if attempts count, and they should, the first guy’s dunk was clearly better. We’d have given a 45.
- The Mailman tribute (a dunk Southerland fans recognized instantly; Travis and I both called it from the approach angle) was genuinely cool and genuinely hard to score across the one-foot/two-foot divide.
- Jaxson Hayes was the heartbreak. His college free-throw-line Windmill footage had me expecting fireworks; instead a stuttered, ruined approach turned his big dunk into a two-step free-throw-line attempt, and instead of stopping and resetting, he played through it: the cardinal contest sin. The judges gave the wreckage a 44.6, within a point of clean dunks, which is the 40-point-floor disease intact for another year. Our score: 42, generously.
- The Eastbay off one foot from the Lakers’ backup big was the night’s technicality-versus-television case study: a legitimately rare dunk that, at full speed to a casual eye, reads as a soft layup-Eastbay. The broadcast crowd shrugged; the dunkers gasped. Both reactions were correct, which is the whole judging problem in one dunk.
- The best dunk of the contest (a head-at-rim monster from the Spurs’ athlete, foreshadowed by an even better warmup clip) somehow scored below Carter’s regular Eastbay, and a straight Windmill elsewhere got a 50, violating our standing rule: leave room on the scale for something better, always.
Recurring sins we logged: choreographed dancing burning shot-clock (multiple dunkers lost 15-20 seconds to bits), early-starting clocks, and the floor-of-40 scoring that makes every contest a coin flip between 44 and 50. Our standing affection also held: there is something purely joyful about NBA-grade athletes just jumping as high as they can and punching things, and the contest delivers that even when the judging doesn’t.
Contest craft corner: control the room
The Hayes disaster produced a practical tip for everyone doing smaller contests: in non-NBA settings, you can often manage the contest: ask for the redo on a botched approach, declare a wild lob a practice throw, clarify attempt rules with the judges beforehand. Not gamesmanship, just communication; organizers at local events almost always work with you. And if you truly can’t reset mid-air: do something, throw it off the backboard, improvise the LeBron save, because the half-effort completion scores worse than the creative bail. Travis and I have both lived this.
The Mac McClung drop: four dunks better than the contest
While the contest aired, Mac posted four new dunks, and the comment sections calling them “not that crazy” require correction, because three of the four are among the rarest dunks ever filmed:
- An Inverted Scorpion: a motion so rare that Kilganon is essentially the only person to hit the pure version on 10’ (mine is the push-off variant), and Mac commented that he got this one for me, which I will be insufferable about indefinitely. Kilganon’s video called it “a Dylan dunk.” I did not invent the Scorpion. I am keeping the comment anyway.
- The flexibility one (Travis and I audited our own hips on camera and concluded neither of us can do it): a motion neither of us has truly landed in a lifetime of low-rimming.
- The Eastbay two-hand reverse off the dribble: his old signature, hit since high school, never done in an NBA contest, and watching it from a guy literally an inch taller than me recalibrates what I think I’m allowed to attempt.
- The Lost and Found: which the haters dismissed with “you just have to get the pass and timing right,” an objection that describes every dunk ever performed. (“The double Eastbay is easy, you just transfer at the right time.” Thank you, professor.) His visible celebration suggests it took a real grind, and it has absolutely never been done in an NBA contest.
Our shared wishlist: Mac back in the contest doing exactly these (one no-prop dunk last year would have silenced the push-off discourse entirely), and someday his 720, because his 540s finish with hang-and-keep-spinning room, the single coolest way a spin dunk can end, the way Kilganon does it, the way I exaggerated mine in that 2024 9’ contest. The man is, functionally, a pro dunker employed by basketball, and the contest is poorer every year he sits out.
That wraps the sweep of this year’s All-Star Saturday. Drop your scores and Mac takes in the comments; we read everything. Next up: a content-and-social-media episode with Travis, filming in the next couple of weeks. Subscribe with notifications on so you catch it. See you in the next one.