Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James was named an All-Star for the 22nd time in his career in 2026, but while he has been making these trips year after year, he’s never participated in the Dunk Contest. James has been blamed for the “death” of the contest, but Klutch Sports Group CEO Rich Paul thinks his client has been in a no-win situation.
Paul made quite a wild claim on his Game Over podcast about what the reaction would be had James ever won the contest.
“If he won, they just would’ve said it was rigged,” Paul said, via NBA Courtside.
Would some internet trolls have said that? Definitely. Would the likes of Skip Bayless discredit the accomplishment? Probably, but the basketball world at large would have done no such thing. This seems like an absurd comment by Paul.
While all this talk about James killing the contest seems a bit much, he probably should have taken part at some point. So many of the great high-flyers who came before him, like Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, and Vince Carter, had done it, and helped make it probably the biggest attraction of All-Star Weekend.
Paul stated on the podcast that he doesn’t agree with that line of thinking and claimed that James did actually think about participating a couple of times.
“The couple times that he was deciding to do it, he had an ankle sprain like two games before or whatever,” Paul said. “And then it gets to the point to where you just like, ‘No, I’m not going to do it,’ and that’s his choice… I think because someone else did it prior to you, people feel like you should have to do something. In sports, I guess that’s the way it goes. But I don’t agree with that.”
James was thinking about entering the contest back in 2005, but ultimately decided against it because he was dealing with a sore left ankle. Then in 2009, he announced that he was preliminarily putting his name in the 2010 contest, but skipped it.
While one can point to injuries for a couple of years, James ultimately has had plenty of opportunities over his 23-year career. The 41-year-old simply decided against participating and once explained that it was never a goal of his.
“I don’t think it was something I wanted to accomplish in my career; it’s not a goal of mine, and it never was coming into the NBA to be a part of the Dunk Contest, you know?” James said. “Making the NBA All-Star Team was, being the league MVP, winning Defensive Player of the Year, and winning NBA Championships…? Those were some goals of mine. The NBA Dunk Contest was never a goal of mine so, it wasn’t something that I had too much passion for.”
The NBA had even once offered $1 million for a dunk contest involving James, Carter, Kobe Bryant, and Tracy McGrady, but it never materialized. Carter believes he was the only one among the four to say yes, and it’s a real shame we didn’t get to see these four go at it.
With James now at the end of his career, it appears the only dunk contest we’d ever have seen him in was the 2003 McDonald’s All-American Dunk Contest. He won with a score of 250.
As for this 2026 Slam Dunk contest, the participants are Carter Bryant, Jaxson Hayes, Keshad Johnson, and Jase Richardson. There is no star power whatsoever, and James’ critics will point the finger at him for it.
