6"2 white G-league guy saves NBA dunk contest
Mac McClung, who has played all of two NBA games since being called up by the Sixers from the G league, won the dunk contest going away, prompting amazed looks from Giannis and the other stars on the court. Jumping over two guys, a 540, and other sweet dunks.
February 19th, 2023 at 9:13 AM ^
I think the headline you meant to post was "NBA fan who doesn't know where to put quotation marks to indicate height makes unnecessary reference to dunk winner's race in message board shitpost."
February 19th, 2023 at 9:16 AM ^
Yes, I might not have put it so harshly, but I think we are almost over this 'white guy something something jump something something' meme. The judges and crowd were appreciative, period, from what I saw.
February 19th, 2023 at 9:24 AM ^
Exactly - these days it's more popular to use coded language like "looks like a guy that walked in off the street" or "that guy from your office."
The Luka Doncification of race-speak in the NBA.
February 19th, 2023 at 10:25 AM ^
Matt McClung's claim to fame is literally insane dunking ability from high school. Idk why people are shocked by this.
Secondly, the best dunk contest outside of the old school ones ending w/ Vince Carter was the 2016 contest. This year's contest only had one good contestant: McClung. 2016 had 2 very capable winners that ended in controversy between Gordon and Lavine.
Honestly the 3-point contest is taking over as the premier All-Star Event. Players like Dame and Tatum actually partake. Historically, you have Steph, Klay, KD partaking. The best dunkers in the NBA don't even enter the slam dunk contest anymore. It's a joke that Ja Morant didn't do it this year when he's been crushing it during games. LeBron never did it either, which probably led to its decline since Vince Carter.
And since we're on the race topic: the last white guy to win the dunk contest was Brent Barry in 1996. There have been 8 total white guys who have participated since its inception. And lastly, Michael Jordan holds the record for worst 3 point contest with only 5 makes.
February 19th, 2023 at 11:48 AM ^
Nothing compares to Spud! Just remarkable.
February 19th, 2023 at 11:48 AM ^
"Honestly the 3-point contest is taking over as the premier All-Star Event. . . The best dunkers in the NBA don't even enter the slam dunk contest anymore."
These comments fly in two different directions, unless I'm missing something.
February 19th, 2023 at 12:02 PM ^
They make perfect sense to me.
February 19th, 2023 at 2:03 PM ^
You're missing something glob!
February 19th, 2023 at 4:49 PM ^
Matt McClung's claim to fame is literally insane dunking ability from high school. Idk why people are shocked by this.
You know why people are shocked by this? Because outside of TTU, Big12, and maybe some hardcore college fans, nobody knows much, if anything, about him.
My first thought was, "That name sounds vaguely familiar" and that's it. There are way more people who have no clue who he is vs. those who know he was known for insane dunking ability in high school.
February 20th, 2023 at 10:13 AM ^
Well, to be fair, it's not just that Luka is white. He doesn't have a particularly athletic looking physique compared to the majority of the all star athletes that he plays against. His peers tend to either be slim and lean or rippling with muscles. He is neither. There are plenty of white guys in the league that have body types that are more consistent with people's expectations of a pro basketball player.
February 20th, 2023 at 2:16 PM ^
Luka likes beer, therefore I like Luka. After his ridiculous 60/20/10 game, he said “I'm tired as hell. I need a recovery beer.” That's my dude.
February 19th, 2023 at 9:51 AM ^
C’mong mang he couldn’t possibly have meant it that way…there was already a movie about all of this with Wesley snipes and woody harrelson and stuff.
Maybe Dickenson, Tschedder and Baker could watch it and…
nah [that’s racist gif]
February 19th, 2023 at 1:16 PM ^
This just in, they are remaking it to remind us that white dudes shouldn’t jump.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Men_Can%27t_Jump_(2023_film)
February 19th, 2023 at 5:45 PM ^
that remake reminds me of the other remake that shouldn't have happened when they remade Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
February 19th, 2023 at 9:34 AM ^
Thank you for white knighting for (/checks notes) white men.
Finally, they get some protection in this world.
February 19th, 2023 at 9:47 AM ^
Just imagine how great the NBA will be when it's 60% white dudes and 15% black with the other 25% being a mix of all other races (in the name of equity). Can use that term to argue multiple sides of any comparison in the name of "fairness."
February 19th, 2023 at 9:52 AM ^
There are about 450 players in the NBA and 1700 players in the NFL. That ends the list of high earning black-dominated fields of employment.
Thanks for playing.
February 19th, 2023 at 1:25 PM ^
Thank you sir. I have no idea why you are negged for illustrating an appalling reality.
February 19th, 2023 at 2:05 PM ^
You forgot hip hop Chuck, if there was a point you were trying to make...🤷♂️
February 19th, 2023 at 10:58 AM ^
This is certainly a take.
February 19th, 2023 at 10:55 AM ^
The largest race war in history was between two groups of (mostly) white people. Germans vs Soviets—or more precise Teutonics vs Slavs. 40 million dead.
The Holocaust was one group of white people attempting to destroy another group of white people. (Yes, Jews are white. At least when the caste system allows them to be. Whiteness is a fickle thing.)
Being white didn’t protect the Irish from having their land stolen and their culture destroyed by the Anglo-Normans, later rebranded as English. That’s because skin color was never the reason why Western Europeans did what they did. It was economic. Race was invented as a justification.
There is no white people. No singular civilization. Just a bunch of tribes who fought each for millennias for the thing peoples fought for in other parts of the globe who through the accident of history saw *some* emerge as globe traveling invaders and enslavers not unlike Vikings, Arab or Moors.
This country collectively badly needs to actually re-examine how it understands race, colonialism, war, genocide, and slavery. Americans of all colors see the world in such narrow, simple terms.
February 19th, 2023 at 12:01 PM ^
Being white didn’t protect the Irish from having their land stolen and their culture destroyed by the Anglo-Normans, later rebranded as English. That’s because skin color was never the reason why Western Europeans did what they did. It was economic. Race was invented as a justification.
I don't always agree with you, but you are the voice of reason in an otherwise disastrous post. This is all too true. Racism comes into existence as the justification for theft of land, labor, and resources. Before that the English othered the Irish as sub-human to justify colonialism, and the Spanish subject conversos to the 'one-drop rule' to justify continued theft of the assets of Spain's Jewish population.
February 19th, 2023 at 12:24 PM ^
It's Moops!
February 19th, 2023 at 12:27 PM ^
Only one problem with this somewhat potted thesis: Whiteness wasn't really much a thing at that stage. Europeans, insofar as they cast things in anything like racial terms, all looked on one another as different, and really didn't give them a scientific characterization--othered is more like what was happening. Africa, the French said, began at the Pyrenees; all these things were in flux, as they still are. In England the Irish were characterized (we almost always do these things for political and economic purposes) as monkeys, for example, and definitely as racially inferior, insofar as this was taking shape (very much in response to colonialization, where the conquerers needed to justify their exploitation of various peoples. The first plantations were in Ireland. That continued as they enslaved the Irish and sent them here, where they really weren't too cut out for the work, the story goes (all the stories want careful examination, which is what worries Ron DeSantis; the idea of his kids deciding for themselves worries f out of his ilk).
Race is an ongoing cultural and historic project--that's really the only 'theoretical' thing I see about CRT; the rest is history, digging into what actually happened, which worries these people lots more. Mostly 'whiteness' is a settler colony thing, retrospectively applied, new polities being created from the huge and scary differences people brought with them. Creating a national self so you could start Othering the rest and taking their stuff. The Nazis looked down on everyone as other races, and inferior.
Jews aren't 'white;' they're constructed historically; genetic markers for race constitute way less than 1 percent of what we are, but most people of lineal Jewish descent carry some of these markers, including my brown adopted daughter, who is also, apparently, of Nigerian and Irish descent. Salvatore Quattro doesn't get to decide that Jews are 'white'!
One of my UM anthro profs used to be fond of saying that 97 percent of all human activity is the same everywhere; we just make a big deal out of difference when it proves. . . useful. I'd go a little lower, but I saw his point.
EDIT: Was thinking after I wrote this about the holes in my knowledge about when race comes to be an idea. My wife tells me she's overseeing a dissertation by a young ethnomusicologist right now, about the suppression of Scottish culture, that includes a statement by a British medical official who talks about the Celts as an inferior race, and says that they need to be 'scientifically and systematically wiped out.' Undated, late 18 c. FWIW.
February 19th, 2023 at 2:02 PM ^
The Confederacy had a Jewish Secretary of War and later Treasury—Judah P. Benjamin. If he wasn’t considered white there is no way that would happen.
I don’t determine anything.
Insofar as white is a thing Jews are white. Or least European Jews are.
White is a skin color identity. When I saw Jews are white that is what I am referring to. If anything Jews prove the hollowness of white skin as an identity.
Whiteness is not real. It never was real.
My avatar would not have seen himself as white until he came to the US where he was placed into that category by Anglos. Even then he was still seen as lazy, possibly criminal WOP.
My grandfather had to deal with my grandmother’s father anti-Catholic/Italian bigotry. Gramps lied about who he was so he could date my grandmother.
Whiteness always had limits.
February 20th, 2023 at 2:01 PM ^
"Insofar as white is a thing "
White isn't a thing - other than a subjective irrational label based in zero facts used to differentiate the "other".
February 19th, 2023 at 2:15 PM ^
Slavery was racialized in the Americas in 1650.
All modern identities are constructed historically.
The idea of an Italian is a modern concept. It is doubtful for example that Columbus would have identified as Italian.
There are debates about German and Italian as identities.
CRT is an ideological framework. Frameworks are awful for learning about a complicated world. You shouldn’t be slotting events and peoples of the past in modern framing that exist solely for political purposes.
De Santis doing what parties have long done—remove books or narratives that offend them. It’s tit for tact.
I think it is stupid and pointless, but most of the cultural wars are just that.
February 19th, 2023 at 8:43 PM ^
One thing people can agree on is that they don't know what to agree on. When one says Jews are white you can tell that their history lessons are not one of completeness. God Bless us all and GO BLUE!
February 20th, 2023 at 7:07 PM ^
This is an excellent post in response to largely a-historical drivel. I just want to let you know that I appreciate you.
February 19th, 2023 at 1:24 PM ^
How about this: scientifically, white, black, etc., don't exist. We are one species as proven by any "race" being able to breed with any other. Race is a political creation to justify lessening or fully removing the rights of another cultural group based on things like pigment production, forehead size, larger epicanthal folds. Almost categorically "race" has been used by one group to steal resources from another. Thus, any current use of "race" only serves to perpetuate the possibility of perpetuating this faux division. Race should presently exist only in recognizing the repression it has historically been used to justify and the corollaries and vestiges of that repression in the modern world, and to compensate for this. Race, as a discussion of capability, even in a slam dunk contest, is unsound scientifically and unnecessarily divisive.
February 19th, 2023 at 4:13 PM ^
Precisely. Genetic diversity makes humanity more robust and resistant to pandemics. Differing phenotypes are the result of random genetic mutations. All humans have about 99.9% similar DNA.
February 19th, 2023 at 6:49 PM ^
Africa has the greatest amount of genetic diversity.
February 20th, 2023 at 3:57 PM ^
While there is a long history of ism in history, and in the US, many groups have been marginalized at various times, including but not limited to Italians, Irish chinese, Japanese, muslims, catholics and others, it seems to be hard to deny that from slavery to redlining, racism against blacks has been both particularly prolonged and persistent. In the US, I think one would be hard pressed to suggest that blacks and native Americans have suffered more. Since there are more than 6 times as many blacks in the US as native Americans, it should not be a huge surprise that when people in the US think about racism, blacks are the first group of people to come to mind.
February 19th, 2023 at 12:39 PM ^
The fact that the guy is white makes it a more interesting story because white guys who can get up like that are almost non-existent. You, I and everyone else knows it. There’s nothing wrong with saying it and nothing “unnecessary” about it.
February 20th, 2023 at 9:06 AM ^
Maybe you "knows" it, but don't assume I and everyone else does. As just one counter to your Jimmy the Greek thesis, the list of top high jumpers in the world is populated largely by white Slavs and Russians. The NBA is not the way it is in terms of racial makeup because of genetic differences, it's the long-term result of cultural and political factors. But I'll stop taking up your time and let you get back to your phrenology textbooks.
February 19th, 2023 at 4:27 PM ^
Clutch your pearls more.
February 19th, 2023 at 5:58 PM ^
Wait. Don't you know that "White Men Can't Jump?"
Don't make me have to tell you young bucks where I remembered that little gem and a perfectly timed and referenced question. My skin will wither up and die from old age.
February 20th, 2023 at 1:45 PM ^
You should have seen what happened that time he commissioned a model of Stonehenge.
February 19th, 2023 at 9:33 AM ^
If a 6 inch guy dunks, I'm giving him a 50.
February 19th, 2023 at 9:35 AM ^
But what if he convinces his wife that he’s 10 inches?
February 19th, 2023 at 11:39 AM ^
I feel personally attacked
February 19th, 2023 at 4:44 PM ^
Whose wife?
February 19th, 2023 at 4:46 PM ^
She won’t need convincing.
February 19th, 2023 at 3:22 PM ^
What about a 12 inch pianist?
February 19th, 2023 at 9:33 AM ^
Anyone who has followed Mcclung for any amount of time knew he had a real shot to put on a show last night. Might not be a full time nba player, but the kid can throw it down with the best of them.
February 19th, 2023 at 10:04 AM ^
So what you are saying is… no one knew
February 19th, 2023 at 11:24 AM ^
Most college basketball fans know the Mac McClung story, all-time scoring leader from the state of Virginia, two solid if unspectacular years at Georgetown, transferred to Texas Tech, went pro, undrafted but had a cup of coffee with the Bulls and Lakers and is now straddling the G-league and Sixers roster.
But mostly people know him because his game is what you'd see if The Answer and White Chocolate had a baby.
February 19th, 2023 at 12:59 PM ^
Yeah a lot of my NBA buddies are acting like Mclung came out of nowhere. If you follow college basketball you’ve know about him since a high school recruit