Feel The Excitement: The Spurs' Stephon Castle And The Bulls' Matas Buzelis Have Committed To This Year's Dunk Contest

It's not exactly a hot take to suggest that the NBA's Dunk Contest is in some ways of life support. Every year it feels like we're just chasing the high that was the Zach LaVine vs Aaron Gordon Dunk Contest of 2016. Please take a minute and appreciate just how amazing that contest truly was

Gordon also got boned in 2017, but I think most will agree that this was probably the last truly great Dunk Contest. That doesn't mean there haven't been some decent dunks in the years since 2016, but nothing that come close to reaching that level. Where dunk after dunk was must watch stuff that was a combination of flawless execution but also dunks that you don't really see all that often.

When it comes to the Dunk Contest, I think people get too bent out of shape in terms of the names deciding to do it. People want "stars" and "big names" to participate, and while that's fun to some degree, what I care more about is the actual dunks. I don't care if you're a no name NBA player or a G-League guy like McClung. Just show me awesome shit, make your dunks on the first attempt, and be innovative. It doesn't matter to me if that's coming via a superstar or not. Honestly while Jaylen Brown participated last year, I spent the whole time being nervous about his landings. Even though there's a 0.0000001% chance a guy gets hurt during this team, that's all I cared about during his dunks and in some ways, it took away from the experience.

While we still don't know if McClung will seek to defend his back to back Dunk Contest titles, we do have our first two participants that have officially committed to the event

I imagine because the majority of people aren't sickos and aren't watching a ton of Spurs or Bulls games, I think it's fair to suggest the overall reaction might have been along the lines of "Who???", and then as a result come the takes that the Dunk Contest is dead. That very well may be true, but it's not because guys like Castle and Buzelis are doing it. Those guys are both fun as hell and certainly could pull off some cool shit. You don't have to be a superstar to be an elite Dunk Contest participant. Nobody cares about your stature in the league as long as you pull off great dunks with flawless execution.

Both of these dudes can really get up there, so I'm in on their selection for this contest. Again, I don't need big names, I just need big dunks.

I will say this though. You cannot have Stephon Castle in this thing and then there not be a dunk where he jumps over Wemby. That's like 95% of the reason I want to see him participate. Can he recreate the dunk we saw from Hamidou Diallo back in 2019 when he did this over Shaq?

Will we see Buzelis rock an MJ jersey and try and recreate his FT line dunk? I'm just saying, there's potential for this thing to not be a complete snooze fest and we only have the first two participants.

We know we're not getting Zion, we know we're not getting Ant or Ja, so don't even waste time thinking about it. Those days are over. It would be incredible if we finally did get LeBron to do it since he only probably has 1 or 2 more All Star Weekends left, but that ship has likely sailed as well. 

So who else could make sense? Either of the Thompson twins (Amen or Ausar), Shaedon Sharpe, Brandon Miller, Jalen Green, Jalen Johnson, there are plenty of fun young and up and coming players to choose from. 

Will anyone ever get us back to the glory days that were 2016? Probably not. But I don't need 2016, I just need it to not be a complete snooze fest. That's the bar.