The NBA Slam Dunk Contest has long struggled to recapture the star-studded magic since Air Canada was leaping in the air. Now, one of the last icons of the All-Star spectacle made a huge revelation. Apparently, a little before Adam Silver’s time, the league tried a costly maneuver to keep the dunk festivities alive. Too bad only one was up for it.
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For Hall of Famers Vince Carter and his cousin, Tracy McGrady, the decline of the Slam Dunk contest has been a tragedy they can’t keep quiet about. But only now, with the Cousins podcast, did they reveal an unknown piece of Slam Dunk lore. And surprisingly, T-Mac betrayed his cousins there.
Ahead of the 2026 All-Star weekend, the cousins discussed the contest once more and its decline. Carter only had to ask, “Do you remember…” for T-Mac to complete the sentence. “The million dollars? Yeah.”
Vince revealed, and T-Mac confirmed, that the league once tried to buy that magic back with a massive $1 million payday. According to Carter, “They wanted me, you, Kobe, and Bron, for sure, for a million dollars. And I said, ‘I’m in if everybody else is in.’”
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Apparently, only InVincible jumped on the seven-figure incentive to compete on the same stage with LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and his cousin. The refusal from the game’s biggest titans left Carter as the lone holdout for the event.
They might have spoken about it in private enough times for T-Mac to sing a very guilty, “No, no, no,” when Carter brought it up. Now Vince put on a very uncon-Vince-ing (pun intended) consolation when he said, “I’m good, I’m good.’ I felt like at the end of the day, I would love to, you know, get a confirmation, but I felt like I was the only one that said yes.”
Vince Carter mourns his dream contest
The “million-dollar phone call” reportedly took place during an era when the contest’s prestige began to wane as superstars opted for brand protection over high-risk, high-reward gambles. Even Kobe Bryant, once the youngest winner of the competition, later chose not to participate.
The context behind this massive offer highlights the NBA’s desperation to fix the Saturday night centerpiece of the All-Star Weekend. Many NBA players who never participated themselves blame LeBron James, the only big-name star in the $1 million offer group, who never participated in the dunk contest, for killing it by perpetually declining invitations.
While Bryant (the 1997 winner), Carter (the 2000 icon), and McGrady had all proven their dunking mettle, the chance to see them face off against a prime James was the league’s ultimate white whale.
Carter had suffered a lot of wear and tear as a posterizing monster and rarely participated in his later career. But he laments not getting a callback to compete against Bryant and James. And it wasn’t just the missed million.
Carter revealed that he still had one high-flying move in his arsenal that we haven’t seen. After the ‘dunk of death’ from the Olympics, this was supposed to be a slam for the ages. When McGrady asked what he would have tried in the million-dollar contest, Carter’s answer was physically daunting: “Two elbows on the rim, then dunk.”
The physics of it is unimaginable even for T-Mac. Carter maintains it’s a move he’s made since high school, and now we won’t see it on the biggest stage.
While the league continues to lean on G-League standouts like Mac McClung to carry the event, Vince Carter’s dream contest serves as a bittersweet reminder of a missed era of competition.
