How a Butler teacher’s viral dunk over ESPN’s Tony Reali on Dan Le Batard Show came to be: ‘It was pretty wild’
Jon McKay won’t be remembered for a storied high school basketball career, he jokingly admitted, but his dunks in a Miami gym a few weeks ago will go down as his greatest basketball achievement.
McKay went viral June 16 dunking on ESPN personality Tony Reali during an episode of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. Reali hosted ESPN’s Around The Horn for more than two decades before the show was canceled in May, and Le Batard, previously an ESPN personality, is the host of one of the largest sports podcasts in the country. McKay has been following them both for nearly 20 years.
“I think it would have to be (my greatest basketball achievement),” said a laughing McKay, a sociology teacher at Butler Intermediate High School.
“I certainly thought my athletic days were behind me.”
McKay grew up in Butler, played for the Golden Tornado before graduating in 1998 and then at Butler County Community College. He later was an assistant coach for Joe Lewandowski at BC3 from 2004-09 before taking over as head coach at Deer Lakes from 2011-15. He’s been a teacher for 22 years.
McKay was staying at The Elser Hotel in Miami, where the Le Batard Show is recorded live every day, and packing to get on a cruise ship for Key West and the Bahamas with his wife, Natalie, while watching the show on his iPad. He saw Reali was downstairs in the hotel’s coffee shop, and Natalie, who doesn’t watch the show, said McKay should head down to try to meet him.
So McKay did, and Reali roped him into participating in one of his favorite shows by suggesting McKay dunk on him. Reali’s mission was to “spread some positivity” during his guest appearance on DLS that week, and he decided one of many ways to do that was to have a fan of the show — McKay was even wearing a Le Batard Show T-shirt by chance that day — posterize him.
In true show fashion, the first attempt didn’t air when the video feed cut out right as McKay went airborne, something Le Batard made fun of. But McKay said proudly he and Reali attempted it several times and he made every attempt.
(Skip to the 1:09:40 mark of the video below to watch McKay’s first appearance.)
One of McKay’s one-handed slams eventually aired on the show several minutes later, McKay knocking the ESPN host to the floor as Reali laughed.
“Never done anything more positive in my life,” McKay said after the dunk.
Lewandowski was the first to post the video on social media that day, and it has since gotten nearly 108,000 views. It caught McKay off guard, so much so that by the time he got on the cruise’s Wi-Fi, he was getting messages from friends and even former players, some he hadn’t heard from in a while.
“It was pretty wild, because as soon as it ended … I ran to the ship,” McKay said.
McKay said he also received some show merchandise, Reali was “so kind” and the video crew was great. He said Reali was even checking his watch and made sure McKay got back to his room in time to catch the cruise.
“The whole cruise was fun, the whole trip was fun, but that moment’s going to stick with me forever,” he said.
