Kevin Love hasn’t made many highlights this season for the Miami Heat, but his commentary during NBA All-Star festivities on Saturday night went viral.
Mac McClung, a White G League player who is from Gate City, Virginia, and played two seasons at Georgetown, won his third consecutive slam dunk contest title as the top stars in a league dominated by Black players continue to skip the competition.
Undeterred, Love, who is White, offered a suggestion to return the event to its glory days.
“A great way to fix All-Star Weekend’s Saturday Night — let the overwhelming majority of the NBA know that Mac McClung has won 3 straight dunk contests during Black History Month,” Love wrote on X.
The joking suggestion attracted more than 4 million views and a chorus of fans who questioned his seriousness.
But, if other NBA stars are any indication, the former All-Star may have a point.
“Mac might make me decide to dunk,” Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant, one of the league’s most notorious in-game dunkers, wrote on X.
“If you do it. I’ll do it with you,” Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo wrote in a reply to Morant.
The NBA dunk contest, once appointment viewing, has become a formality in recent years. Saturday’s competition featured a pair of rookies (the San Antonio Spurs’ Stephon Castle and the Chicago Bulls’ Matas Buzelis), a G-Leaguer (McClung) and a role player (Milwaukee Bucks guard Andre Jackson Jr., who has averaged 3 points per game in his career).
The 2025 dunk contest was a far cry from the once-marquee event, where the league’s stars gathered to show off their athleticism.
The modern NBA, with its emphasis on player rest and load management, has lost the power of name recognition in the dunk contest. LeBron James has never competed in the event and an All-Star hasn’t won the contest since Donovan Mitchell in 2018.
Time will tell if Antetokounmpo and Morant follow through on their interest in an attempt to prevent McClung from completing an unprecedented four-peat.
• Liam Griffin can be reached at lgriffin@washingtontimes.com.
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