Good story on Bridges. (Aren't they all good?)

That’s Miles Bridges turning Dewayne Dedmon into a bowl of menudo.

Category 1—Difficulty/impressiveness: Here’s a screenshot of Miles Bridges mid-dunk:

See the shape that his body is making? Here, I’ll highlight it for you with a red line:

That’s a beautiful shape. It’s like the edge of a waxing crescent moon. It’s a thing that very good dunkers do because (a) it looks extremely cool, and (b) it makes the dunk harder to block, because they’ve both moved the ball farther back and also have generated way more force to push it past a defender’s block attempt. (This is why Bridges falls after the dunk. He’s anticipating that Dedmon is going to at least make a little bit of contact with the ball, so Bridges cocks it back extra far and smashes it forward extra hard. Since Dedmon isn’t able to get up where Bridges gets up, Bridges is thrown off-balance, like when you go to open a door that you think is very heavy and so you push it real hard but it turns out the door is light and you end up just whipping it open like an idiot.) If a player does the waxing crescent thing on a dunk, it automatically turns into a top-level kind of showing. Big score here for Bridges. 16/20.

Category 2—Dunker’s reaction: You get a decent little flex from Bridges, which is always appreciated, but more importantly he gives you the I’m Revving the Motorcycle celebration as he bounces back down the court, and of course that’s notable here because it’s one of Vince Carter’s signature dunk celebrations, and Vince Carter plays for the opposing team. (This, clearly, is not a disrespectful lift of the move. Bridges has been on the record about hoping to imitate Vince Carter’s dunking ability since he was in high school. Choosing to do Vince’s celebration while Vince is in the building is his version of that scene in The Godfather when Bonasera kisses Don Corleone’s ring.) 13/20.

Category 3—Defense: Dewayne Dedmon tried. Dewayne Dedmon died. 11/20.

Category 4—Backstory: This is unfair to Dedmon, but: One of my very favorite basketball things is watching someone who used to play for my beloved Spurs get done up somewhere else after he leaves the Spurs. (The A1 example is when Antonio Daniels, a semi-phenomenon when he played in San Antonio because he was young and handsome and visited many nightclubs in town, got double-crossed up by Allen Iverson in 2006.) Dedmon had the chance to pick up his player option at the end of his contract with the Spurs during the summer of 2017 but opted not to. And so, because of that, I’m going to give Bridges a big score here even though technically he shouldn’t get one. 16/20.

Category 5—Cleanliness of the dunk: I love when the net comes splashing all the way up through the rim. It’s pretty. 5/5.

Category 6—Reaction of those not directly involved with the dunk: It’s the one announcer who says, “Uh oh,” to himself as Bridges is rising up that really lets you know that this dunk is real anarchy. There’s a scene late in Goodfellas where Joe Pesci’s character, a very violent hothead named Tommy DeVito, walks into a room because he thinks he’s there to become a made man. He’s all dressed up in his best suit and he’s very proud. It’s just a great, great moment for him as he’s walking in. As soon as he gets in there, though, he sees that it’s empty. He says, “Oh no,” and then blammo! A gunshot to the back of the head. That’s what this dunk is, in a manner of speaking. And of course you get this wonderful shot of Kemba Walker on the bench reacting to it:


Because Kemba knows what I’m going to tell you right now: It wasn’t a waxing crescent move that Bridges was doing. He was shitting on a dude; that’s what he was doing. 16/20


(Clearly this is a joke. Dedmon is a doll and I like him a lot.)

Total: The Miles Bridges dunk on Dewayne Dedmon was 77 percent disrespectful to Dedmon.