Zion Williamson Wins McDonald's All-American Dunk Contest

So tonight was the McDonald’s All-American JamFest, which included the 3-point contest and obviously the dunk contest. More importantly it included Zion Williamson in the dunk contest.

If you, for some reason, have no idea who Zion Williamson is, he’s arguably the most famous and best high school dunker we’ve seen in years. He has the unique ability to be extremely powerful with his dunks while also showing some flash, even if it’s in a game.

The other important thing here is he’s not overly big at just 6’6″. That makes the dunks look even better, because you almost lose impact or style points if you’re over 6’8″ or so. Just looks too easy. At 6’6″ you can really see the hops from Zion.

Williamson is the No. 2 player in the class of 2018 and is committed to Duke. He’s one of the more unique players out there because he’s an undersized post player, which means we could see Duke truly embrace small ball next year with Tre Jones, Cam Reddish, RJ Barrett and Zion. That’s a blog for another day though.

Here are the dunks from tonight:

1st dunk round 1

Not a bad start. It did take him a few times to finish the dunk, which is understandable but also damn impressive to jump like this 4 times in 40 seconds. It almost felt like he needed a bit more room to operate as he was actually doing this in a slightly compacted area.

Round 1 dunk 2:

This dunk was flat out absurd. He absolutely cocked this thing all the way back and finished it on the first time. Oh, this was also with his weak hand. Just a flat out absurd dunk, that looked way too easy for a high schooler to do. Can attest this is fairly tough on a Nerf hoop which I may or may not have practiced before.

Finals, Dunk 1:

Again, just something that he made look way too easy. However, after the two contestants missed before him it was a ‘safe’ dunk.

Finals, Dunk 2:

A little upset he missed the first attempts, because what he was attempting first is flat out ridiculous. However, this is a good dunk. It shows his vertical and he does pull the ball down pretty low. However, here’s the dunk attempt he missed:

If he would have landed that, Twitter 100% would have exploded. During the broadcast people were discussing about where he is as a dunker. He clearly has the potential to be out there. Part of me felt a little disappointed about this dunk contest though because he was never really pushed. He did a couple safe dunks to protect the lead and truly felt like he could have broke something absurd out.

And now he’s on to Duke.