Mac McClung, the three-time defending NBA dunk contest champion, will not participate in the event next month, his father, Marcus McClung, told ESPN on Monday.
“It won't be 4 in a row,” Marcus McClung wrote in a text message. “There's no one reason I can say that was the main reason. In my opinion, it's more of a bunch of reasons that just indicated that he didn't do it.”
Mac McClung told a commercial product interviewer over the weekend that he wouldn't compete this year, adding in an X post that he will post “the dunks we came up with after the contest.”
As recently as last month, McClung, the only player to win the event three times in a row, told ESPN that he “wasn't sure” if he would compete in the 2026 contest. In that interview and others with ESPN, he questioned whether he had new moves suitable for dominating the competition and admitted that his profile as a dunker, rather than an all-around basketball player, had worried him in the past.
Earlier this season, McClung spent a week with the Indiana Pacers after earning his first standard NBA contract on October 28. He appeared in three games and averaged 6.3 points, including 12 points in 19 minutes in the Pacers' 128-108 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on October 31. It was cut on November 6.
McClung has appeared in nine NBA games with five teams.
McClung, who went undrafted in 2021, is currently a member of the Windy City Bulls, Chicago's G League affiliate. He is averaging 23.5 points in 11 games with Windy City during the G League regular season. McClung won a G League championship with the Delaware Blue Coats, the affiliate of the Philadelphia 76ers, and a G League MVP with the Osceola Magic.
To win his dunk contests, he beat Trey Murphy III of the New Orleans Pelicans in the 2023 finals, Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics in 2024 and Stephon Castle of the San Antonio Spurs in 2025, memorably jumping over a car en route to victory.
